Trucks, Technology & Twitter: the Hybrid Truck Convoy and the Truck2020 Study

Trucks, Technology & Twitter: the Hybrid Truck Convoy and the Truck2020 Study

On Tuesday, Oct. 27th, a convoy of dozens of hybrid trucks will be rolling through Atlanta on their way to the Hybrid Truck 2009 National Conference at the Georgia World Congress Center. As part of the conference, IBM will also be publishing its new study, Truck2020, which examines the critical role that next generation trucking will play in making cities, supply chains, retail businesses and many aspects of our planet smarter, greener and more innovative.

Supply Chain Wordle

While not entirely supply chain related, check out Wordle. A fun tool that takes text from your website, blog or whatever and makes word art.

Back to supply chain news, this weekend I had the random opportunity to speak with a recently retired supply chain executive from a leading petroleum company. Once I get his permission, I'll post some outtakes.

http://www.wordle.net/. Images of Wordles are licensed.

Accounting for Everything in the Green Supply Chain

Apple just launched a new set of web pages dedicated to proving that they have a socially responsible supply chain. While it is very open and informative, to really "account for everything" as the website declares they need to go back further then just manufacturing and logistics. For example, what about the carbon emissions released when the trees are cut down and turned into pulp to make their boxes or when the aluminum is manufactured? They are only measuring when they take ownership of the goods, though on the other end they are taking responsibility for the consumer, i.e. the power use and recycling, which many don't consider in their numbers.

Either way, I applaud the openness of the data and I do feel better as a consumer. Lets hope and the Copenhagen event in the next few weeks public officials can do their part.

Operation ECO

Interesting new report out that contains the results from a comprehensive survey of hundreds of industry professionals, including executives from IBM.

Among the key findings were that 76 percent of companies have yet to consider carbon footprint or greenhouse gas emissions across their extended supply chain, yet two-thirds of these companies expect customers to demand this within the next year. Sad, sad, sad.

Here is a link to download a complimentary copy of the full report
http://www.eco-opscenter.com/reports.php

The supply chain of marble

Fresh back from vacation with a new supply chain story for you. As per my last post I took holiday in Tuscany, Italy. While I certainly took the chance to visit the vineyards I also squeezed in a side trip to Carrara, Italy, which as anyone in the area will tell you is world famous for it's marble.

While it seems pretty obvious, the supply chain to bring this rock to your kitchen table or bathroom floor is impressive to see up close simply due to the sheer size of it all. I found it also very strange to see these perfect geometric shapes being cut right on the side of the mountain. But that is really how they do it.

A massive chain saw cuts through the rock into various shapes and sizes depending on the client. They are then transported onto flatbed trucks and driven across this bridge (see photo below). From a distance wood is used to space out the marble slates to provide a little cushion for travel. From there it would only make sense to use boats to ship the marble worldwide, the weight doesn't make air an option.

There is also certainly a lot of waste with tons of rock crumbling to the ground throughout the time I was there. Several trucks do collect them and I can only assume sell them to artists who can carve small objects.

But I'll let these photos do the talking. You can't get a better example of an end to end supply chain, as there are really limited manufacturing costs. Most of the costs I would guess come from logistics, since the weight and volume are off the charts.