All Sage Advice Entries

Saturday, December 01, 2012

Let’s compare notes: Here’s what my colleagues and I saw this year in logistics and transportation management and what we expect next year—along with some suggested actions on important issues.

Thursday, November 01, 2012

An article in our local newspaper lamented the plight of individuals who live in the suburbs and rely upon bus service to get them to work, often at odd hours. Poor ridership has caused some towns to question the need for increased taxes to subsidize the service, while the metro transit authority cites insufficient revenue.

Monday, October 01, 2012

A senior vice president of a major national carrier recently asked me if I thought that tomorrow’s shippers have the commitment to maintain the depth of talent necessary to manage one of the value-added programs that I allude to in my columns. I have always maintained that committed process and performance excellence bring exceptional benefits to both the company and its carrier partners, but they require a combination of developmental and seasoned talent.

Saturday, September 01, 2012

Once you retire from the traditional 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. work days, new hobbies and picture puzzles become a part of everyday life. Sounds boring? Well, it’s just the opposite. Ron and Linda Arnett, highly skilled “puzzlers” with extraordinary insight and sequential awareness, recently introduced me to picture puzzles. Their tutelage provided me with a greater appreciation of the challenges logisticians face in determining the fine points of vendor qualification criteria, assembling the best pre-qualified providers, and selecting the players who can do the precise points of detailed tasks both effortlessly and consistently.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

It dawned on me the other day that some of the practices we employ in the planning and management of our logistics operations are similar to how farmers plan and harvest crops and how baseball managers select their team and deal with the variety of performance issues and injuries throughout the long season.

Sunday, July 01, 2012

“Mom, can you change the time on my watch?” “Sure…bring it over, it should only take a few seconds.”

Friday, June 01, 2012

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Don’t you just hate it when politicians or activists take a quote out of context and blow it out of proportion to make the other party look bad?

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Recently our church choir director retired and a search was immediately undertaken for an interim as well as a full-time replacement. Within a few days, our outgoing director and pastor selected an interim director while a group comprised of choir members and parishioners were sent off to find the full-time replacement—all was well, or so it appeared.

Thursday, March 01, 2012

I often run home from a store, write down the events of an interaction that I had, and then lose the note. However, in a recent case, the unsolved problem had a built-in, daily reminder. Almost every night my Droid smart phone automatically turned itself back on after I powered it off—if I could only be so lucky with the other notes I lose.