Dr. Randy Bradley

We continued this week on Supply Chain Now with more great interviews, conversations, livestreams, and episodes! Did you miss any episodes? On Monday, Scott and Karin Bursa introduced our newest Supply Chain Now program, TEKTOK, to our audience!   On Tuesday, Scott and Greg welcomed Dan Reeve with Esker back to Supply Chain Now for a conversation about increasing supply chain visibility and cash flow.   We published our Supply Chain Buzz on Wednesday, where Scott & Karin discussed the top news in supply chain for the week, and also welcomed featured guest, Lora Cecere with Supply Chain Insights to the podcast.   On Thursday, we continued with the second half of Greg’s interview with Sarah Barnes-Humphrey for TECHquila Sunrise.   And to wrap up the week, Scott and Greg welcomed Ashfaque Chowdhury, PhD with XPO Logistics to the podcast for a great conversation. Which was your favorite episode this week? Never miss an episode by subscribing to Supply Chain Now! Make sure you tune in next week for more great conversation, timely topics, and exceptional guests.

Prospects of supply chain automation have the industry abuzz. It’s even become a major sticking point in the International Longshoremen’s Association contract negotiations with the United States Maritime Alliance. The dockworkers do not want ports to automate processes out of fear they will lose their jobs to machines. Today, there are seemingly endless possibilities for optimization. Terms like generative artificial intelligence and machine learning have become commonplace in discussions about ways to gain efficiencies and reduce costs. Can man and machine work together as businesses leverage automation for optimization? Beyond the Buzz: Understanding the Automation Imperative Machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), is described by Business News Daily as a later-stage development in which machines take in data on their own and then analyze it. Automation, on the other hand, is fixed on repetitive tasks; after a job is performed, an automation system “thinks no further.” The Business News Daily article explained that “automation involves an entire category of technologies that provide activity or work without human involvement,” while AI involves “a machine exhibiting and practicing something similar to what we describe as human thinking – that is, the ability to interact in thousands of ways with the…