Richard Donaldson

Supply Chain Now has been full of great conversations, key takeaways, and inspiring stories from some amazing business leaders this week. Make sure you catch all the latest episodes, interviews, conversations, and livestreams right here for all the hottest supply chain news! On Saturday, Steve Britt, senior manager for customs at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, joins us in partnership with AIAG – Automotive Industry Action Group’s 2020 Supply Chain Summit to talk about his role and thepartnership between industry and US Customs and Border Protection.     On Monday, Scott and the Vector Global Logistics team sat down with Steven Stirling from MAP International for an episode of our Logistics with Purpose series to hear Steven’s inspiring story that made him dedicate his life to bringing critical medicines and health supplies to some of the world’s poorest people.   On Tuesday, TEK TOK Digital Supply Chain Podcast with host Karin Bursa welcomed industry trailblazer Lora Cecere, CEO of Supply Chain Insights, to hear about Lora’s career path     On Wednesday, Scott and Greg sit down with Bob Bova from AccuSpeechMobile to the Supply Chain Buzz to talk about how voice automation in the warehouse is increasing producitivity and announcing na…

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…