Rodney Alston

What a week! Five episodes, four livestreams, and so much to listen to and watch! Did you catch all the episodes? If not, listen here! On Monday, we featured another great episode in This Week in Business History, where Scott looks back at some of the biggest historical events in business history for the week ahead. This week, he spoke about the business legacy of the Apollo missions.   Supply Chain Now · “This Week in Business History for July 20th: The Legacy of the Apollo Program”     Then on Tuesday, Chris Barnes proved that Supply Chain is in fact anything but boring with a cross-over episode of Supply Chain is Boring with Data & WMS Pioneer, special guest John Hill.   Supply Chain Now · “Data Collection is Boring: Data and WMS Pioneer John Hill on Supply Chain is Boring”     On Wednesday we published the Supply Chain Buzz, where Greg and Scott discussed the top supply chain news of the week, and were joined by special guest David Shillingford, Chairman of Resilience360.   Supply Chain Now · “The Supply Chain Buzz for July 20th Featuring David Shillingford with Resilience360”   On Thursday, we shared another great…

At the jampacked MODEX 2026 in Atlanta, Scott Luton sat down with Brian Devine, President & CEO of Ignite Industrial Professionals, for a grounded and timely conversation about one of the most pressing issues in global supply chain: the workforce. While automation continues to dominate headlines, Devine makes one thing clear: people are still at the center of it all. And finding them is getting harder by the day.   “Fingerprints on Every Box” Despite rapid advancements in robotics and automation, Devine emphasizes a fundamental truth that often gets overlooked. “There’s still… fingerprints on boxes. Somebody’s putting their fingerprints on tons of boxes to move it to the next phase of the supply chain,” he explains. Even in many highly automated environments, human labor remains essential. Devine shares an example of a cutting-edge facility where autonomous forklifts handle part of the process, but still rely on human operators to complete the job. The takeaway? Automation is largely augmenting, rather than replacing, the workforce. And that makes the labor shortage even more critical to address.   A Shrinking Labor Pool One of the most compelling parts of the discussion centers on simple supply-and-demand economics. The labor pool isn’t just tight. It’s…