Art of Supply
Episodes
Reshoring Success at GE Appliances Shaded by Tariff Fraud Allegations
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
GE Appliances has been making news for years for the success of their reshoring program. It is a great story: a well-known consumer brand that is brin...
UPS Gambles on Gig Workers
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
UPS is currently stuck between dropping parcel rates, rising union leverage, and stiff competition from their peers. Unlike their peers, UPS is unioni...
Rubber Stamped CDL Regulations
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Commercial Driver's Licenses have been in the news a lot lately, and not for good reasons. A number of fatal accidents have been caused by questionabl...
OceanGate and the Limits of Supply Base Innovation
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 18, 2023, the OceanGate TITAN, a submersible on its way to the Titanic wreck site, imploded, killing all five passengers, including OceanGate ...
Asset Optimization Isn't a Destination – It's a Discipline
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"No trucking company in the history of trucking companies has ever made money if their wheels aren't moving basically all the time." - Sean Devine, Fo...
Inside the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics: Harnessing Creative Destruction
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary." - Austrian Economist Joseph Sc...
Intermodal by Design: How Coordination Drives Efficiency W/ Anne Reinke
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to moving freight long distances, you can go from ship to drayage to rail to over-the-road trucking… or you can go intermodal. Intermo...
The Soybean Economy: What's at Stake in the U.S.–China Trade Talks
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Global trading of steel, lumber, and rare earth minerals makes our companies and industries and economies work. And yet, right up there with those exa...
Kodiak's Road to IPO: AI, Defense Contracts, and the Future of Autonomous Trucking
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On September 25, 2025, Kodiak, an autonomous truck software company founded in 2018, went public with a $2.5 Billion valuation. Unlike other companie...
Reimagining Reshoring With the Help of 3D Printing
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In conversations about reshoring, people usually assume that it means building or retrofitting facilities for U.S. manufacturing, bringing in equipmen...
Truck Drivers, Trade Deals, and Denials: Sorting Fact from Fiction in Nebraska
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Werner Enterprises wishes to clarify that we are not involved in any agreements of discussions regarding the recruitment of Kenyan truck drivers to t...
Target Steps Back from 'Stores as Hubs' Digital Fulfillment
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"It's also important to note that while our stores are fulfilling more digital orders it's not coming at the cost of in-store sales…our stores as hu...
Honk If You're Qualified: Understanding CDL Safety
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to operate a truck over 26,000 pounds, earn money for doing it, and cross state lines… then you need to have a Commercial Driver's Licen...
Can Apple Reshore the iPhone?
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"We're committed to supporting U.S. suppliers involved in every key stage of the chip-making process — from the earliest stages of research and deve...
Shipments Under Siege: The Growing Problem of Cargo Theft
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The supply chain faces a lot of challenges right now: geopolitical unpredictability, tariff uncertainty, the end of de minimis exemptions, and constan...
Lost at Sea: Can the U.S. regain maritime dominance?
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Today, the U.S. ranks 19th in the world in commercial shipbuilding, and we build less than 5 ships each year, while the PRC is building more than 1,7...
From Billable Hours to Measurable Impact: The GSA's Push for Outcome-Based Contracts
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"If you're as good as you say you are, you should be able to keep your cost structure down, deliver the mission and the outcome, and still make a marg...
Coming Unchained to Embrace Global Supply Networks W/ Tim Richardson
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"We've had this whole period of trying to manage supply chains for lowest cost, whereas I think now we're managing for resilience at a managed cost an...
What Restaurants Can Teach Us About Procurement & Supply Chain
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"The way you do one thing is the way you do everything, and we found, over and over, that precision in the smallest of details translated to precision...
Making the Pivot to AI-enabled Global Sourcing W/ Anthony Sardain
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"There is a world where we can have a much more dynamic supply chain. Certainly, the current set of brands that are experiencing the squeeze from the ...
Remembering Fred Smith: FedEx Founder & Supply Chain Visionary
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Life is short and it ends, the clock is ticking. Don't get all wrapped up in your personal self, that's a very unhealthy thing to do." - Fred Smith, ...
How Transportation & Logistics Companies Are Tackling Network Security W/ Ken Rutsky
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"This is a long standing discussion within the networking and security industry: is there a perimeter? I think the reality is the perimeter still exis...
Down but Not Out: California's Fight to Regulate Emissions
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There have been a number of efforts to regulate a transition to lower logistics-related emissions, and all of them involved the state of California an...
A Procurement Crime at Intel: Loopholes and Lessons Learned
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While true crime has gained traction as a genre in the literary world, it's not often we see it applied to procurement. Yet, a fascinating and unsettl...
Prioritizing Dispute Prevention Over Problem Solving
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After spending years reviewing business books, Kelly Barner knows how to recognize authors who truly move the needle–and Kate Vitasek is one of them...
High Velocity Lessons on Lobbying and Trade W/ Samir Kapadia
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"In this climate of being a trade professional in Washington, expect to be in an Uber for about half of the day and then the other half of it sitting ...
Tariffs as a Girder for Domestic Fabricated Steel W/ Stephen Capone and Hollie Noveletsky
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"We need to be able to tolerate this uncertainty and the fluctuations that we're undergoing right now and keep our eye on the long term goal of streng...
Semiconductor CHIPS, Checks, and Challenges
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Even though the world's advanced economies are largely considered post-industrial, chipmaking is an area where domestic manufacturing is now being tr...
How U.S. Tariffs Are Reshaping Global Freight W/ Judah Levine
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Global supply chain leaders and consumers alike have watched for months as the U.S. tariff rollercoaster starts and stops, impacting imported goods. W...
Supply Chains & Second Chances: Human Trafficking Aftercare
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, a lot of work has been done to raise awareness about the massive problem of human trafficking as well as to start to attack that prob...
Building a U.S. Solar Supply Chain
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Between 2008 and 2013, China's fledgling solar-electric panel industry dropped world prices by 80 percent, a stunning achievement in a fiercely compe...
Manufacturing Labor Market Insights in an Uncertain World
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Economic commentators often look at consumer spending as a barometer for confidence and outlook - how good or bad financially do individuals and famil...
Beef with the Big 4: McDonald's vs. the Meat Monopoly
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In October of 2024, McDonald's sued four of the world's largest meat producers – Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef Packing – for allegedly co...
In Defense of Lean Thinking W/ Thomas Goldsby
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everything runs in trends, supply chains included. What was once considered a critical strategy can be cancelled in a heartbeat if conditions change -...
Scope 3 Showdown: Green Century v. Ford
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On May 8th, at Ford Motor Company's annual shareholder meeting, they will face a proposal focused on how they report their efforts to reduce greenhous...
LTL Shakeup: Will Amazon join the fray?
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A few weeks ago, rumors started to swirl that Amazon might be standing up their own for-hire less-than-truckload (LTL) operation to compete with the l...
Who owns the Panama Canal?
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Panama Canal is a 51 mile long waterway that allows ships to cut about 8,000 miles off of a trip from New York to San Francisco around the route a...
Decoding the DOGE Savings Calculator
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, was created by executive order on President Trump's first day back in office. It immedi...
Investing in People-powered Safety in Food Manufacturing W/ Nathan Walts
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Everyone at the plant has a duty to protect the products that we're sending out to the customer. Ultimately, you really have to think about it as sor...
East and Gulf Coast Port Strike – Part 2
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Back in October, when the East and Gulf coast port strike ended after 3 days, we knew there would be a part 2. Short though it was, the strike is esti...
A Narrow Path Towards Noninflationary Tariffs
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since President Trump took office on January 20th, speculation about tariffs has been omnipresent in supply chain planning conversations. But we do ha...
Lessons in Listening from Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"I talk to people and I record it. That's it." - Joe Rogan People often say that we all need to learn to communicate better, and that is true. But we ...
Who will decide the future of EV trucking?
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Who will decide when EV trucking goes from being an option available to anyone to an enforceable mandate that everyone must comply with? That question...
Dylan v. Goliath: The Freight Essentials RICO Case
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"If anyone thinks that they know it all, they're in the wrong place." - Dylan Admire The series of relationships that make the freight industry work i...
Misfortune on 34th Street: Accounting Issues at Macy's
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"It is almost always the cover-up rather than the event that causes trouble." - Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, in reference to the Watergate scandal ...
Nebraska v. California: The EV Trucking Transition
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Now an unelected group of powerful actors has opened a three-front effort to transform the nation's logistics fleet from diesel-powered to electric-p...
The Dawn of a New Era in U.S. Trade Policy
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"India is putting their money where their mouth is. If they're able to execute upon a free trade agreement or a pseudo free trade agreement...then tha...
Reenvisioning Robotics for Warehouse Optimization
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"We have that emotional pull to group together as humans and fight the automation. The reality is you cannot have one without the other, and they are ...
Re-reading Good to Great at the Start of a New Year
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2001, Jim Collins published the book 'Good to Great.' He was supported by a team that invested 10.5 'people years' over the course of 5 calendar ...
Supply Chain Stories to Watch at the Start of 2025
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the supply chain news stories we covered in 2024 look ready to carry right over - or even rise to the top - as we start a new year. Some of th...
Solving Supply Chain Puzzles: Insights from a Year of Interviews
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year on Art of Supply, we welcomed a fantastic group of guests. Each interview episode creates two kinds of challenges: asking questions worthy o...
Supply Chain Forecast: Volatile with Tim Richardson
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"I think if you could summarize what the trend is going to be in the future - It's going to be volatile. That's the trend." - Tim Richardson, Founder...
In Defense of Outliers
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Polling is a science of estimation, and science has a way of periodically humbling the scientist. So, I'm humbled, yet always willing to learn from u...
Walking a Mile in Another Supply Chain's Shoes W/ Alex Jennings
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The reason I like listening is I think, 'If I'd have been CPO there or in other organizations, what would I have done to try and prevent that? And wh...
BONUS: Indictment in the 2022 Tractor Trailer Human Smuggling Case
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When we cover a news story on Art of Supply, we stick with it, even when it seems to have gone cold. In late August, we got an update on the case of t...
Liverwurst, Listeria, and Liability: Food Safety at Boar's Head
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When something goes wrong in the supply chain, it is never good news. It always leads to disruption, often costs a lot of money, and sometimes people ...
The Power of Visualization in Freight Optimization and Resilience with Ruud van Dijk
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Humans are so much more effective in processing something visually than, let's say, a table or two pieces of text next to each other. If you see it o...
Consolidating the USPS Final Mile
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States Postal Service occupies a unique spot in the supply chain. On the one hand, it is a federal agency, tasked with delivering mail to...
Creating a B2C to B to C Improvement Cycle at Walmart Business w/ Ashley Hubka
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Most fundamentally, strategy is about asking good questions, creating alternatives, and then making decisions about how to allocate scarce resources....
Part 4: Head-to-Head Comparison of Candidate Policies
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the final part of this four-part special series, we compare and contrast the actual policy positions of Democratic Candidate Vice President Kamala ...
Part 3: Republican Candidate Former President Donald J. Trump
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In part three of this four-part special series, we will cover the policies and plans of Republican Candidate former President Donald Trump. Former P...
Part 2: Democratic Candidate Vice President Kamala Harris
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In part two of this four-part special series, we will cover the policies and plans of Democratic Candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Vice Presid...
Part 1: Playing Politics with Supply Chains
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are two weeks to go until the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. Interest, speculation, and tension have been building all year. Most news coverag...
Tips for Surviving in a Brave New World
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
'Brave New World' was published by Aldous Huxley in 1932, right between two World Wars and during a time of accelerated scientific discovery. It comes...
East and Gulf Coast Port Strike - Part 1
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Let me be clear: we don't want any form of semi-automation or full automation. We want our jobs—the jobs we have historically done for over 132 yea...
Supply Chains as Business in Action w/ Thomas Goldsby
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The vigor with which companies left to go to the Far East and pursue low cost country sourcing has certainly not been reversed. That's why it is larg...
Developing and Deploying Digital Empathy
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Digital empathy is the ability to humanize customer behaviors, preferences, and aspirations through the connection between human-centered data, insig...
Evaluating India as a Viable Alternative to China w/ Samir Kapadia
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Folks from Dell to HP to Nike to Hasbro to Sony to Apple to Google to Goldman, they're all looking back at India and saying, let's go double down, tr...
Advancements & Adjustments in the GE Appliances Supply Chain
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The way we were running distribution, the processes we were using, it wasn't a matter of, 'Well, just incrementally improve what you've got.' "We nee...
Proposed Patent Rule Changes and their Impact on Innovation w/ Wen Xie
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Procurement and supply chain professionals rely upon competitive market dynamics. After all, competition drives innovation, cost savings, efficiency, ...
The (Lost) Art of Accepting Criticism
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." - Norman Vincent Peale The Art of Supply podcast re...
Freight Electrification as a Service w/ Ian Rust
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are a lot of preconceived notions about the barriers preventing electrified road freight from becoming mainstream. It is seen as too difficult, ...
Fishing for Truth in the Seafood Supply Chain
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Companies and consumers regularly rely on product descriptions to decide whether or not to make a purchase and to determine the right price for that p...
Orchestrating the Chaos of Retail Fulfillment w/ Mike Robinson
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Every time I don't have a delivery truck stop in front of your house, 800 grams of CO2 is never created." - Mike Robinson, Head of Retail Solutions a...
Will FedEx Freight hit the open road?
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On June 26th, The Wall Street Journal reported that FedEx plans to spin off their freight division - and the most interesting part is why. FedEx Freig...
The Great Supply Train Robbery
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
According to reporting in the New York Times, about 20 million containers travel through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach California annually. ...
De Minimis: Supply Chain Trifles the Law Should be Concerned With
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Section 321 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930 contains a small provision known as 'de minimis.' From a Latin phrase meaning "the law does not concern its...
Chasing a Common Supply Chain Objective: Saving Lives w/ Adrian Ristow and David Canarutto
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"You can't just come with ideas. You've got to show that you're going to be on the journey with them." - Adrian Ristow, Executive Director of Project ...
Project Last Mile: A Story Worth Retelling
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
About 15 years ago, someone noticed that while you could buy a cold Coca-Cola in the most remote corners of Africa, lifesaving medicines that require ...
Ultimate Endless Real Estate Costs at Red Lobster
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Red Lobster, the largest seafood chain in the United States, declared bankruptcy on May 19, 2024. As of the filing, they had 551 locations operating i...
Former Pioneer Oil CEO Scott Sheffield - Colluder or Scapegoat?
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On May 25, the Federal Trade Commission announced their consent for the planned acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources by ExxonMobil. It was the lar...
Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: Progress or Setback?
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, took effect in June of 2022 to protect an ethnically Turkish, predominantly Muslim minority that liv...
Sending a Powerful Message About America's Pharmaceutical Independence
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On April 30th, 2024, the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Personnel, held a hearing about the Department Of Defense's efforts ...
Symptoms of Disruption in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pharmaceutical supply chains are never far from news headlines. Regular drug shortages affect our families, friends, and neighbors when they can't acc...
Searching for the Limits of Employee Activism at Google
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Some corporations have chosen to wade into socially sensitive waters over the last few years and others have been pushed in from behind. The adoption ...
The Surging Problem of AI Energy Consumption
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On April 9th, Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings, a British semiconductor and software design company came out and made a statement about data center ener...
Replacing Good Intentions with Good Outcomes at Whistl
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"We know what matters to our employees, and we know what matters to our customers, and we know where the leadership view is. That alignment means that...
Examining the Practicality of the EV Truck Mandate
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Heavy-duty trucks include tractor-trailers, ambulances, garbage trucks, and school buses. All of these are now on an official timeline for reduced emi...
Playing the "China Card" in U.S. Ports
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
80 percent of all ship-to-shore (S2S) cranes at ports in the United States - and 75 percent of all S2S cranes in the world - are made by just one comp...
Net Zero in New York? JBS Accused of Greenwashing
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On February 28, 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued JBS, the largest meat company in the world, for civil fraud. James is accusing the ...
Even with +1, China is still #1
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"China's supply chain has gone through significant, transformative changes in the last five years. For executives or engineers, designers or buyers, w...
What You Don't Know Can Hertz You
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In October of 2021, Hertz announced that they would purchase 100,000 Tesla Model 3's for their rental fleet, followed by 175,000 from GM, and 65,000 f...
Treasure Hunting with TJX
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The global off-price apparel and home fashion market is estimated to be worth $900 Billion. While retailers like Macy's and Bed Bath & Beyond faltered...
Three Strikes for the New Baseball Uniform
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In early February, news hit that there was a problem with the new Major League Baseball uniforms. Redesigned by Nike and made by Fanatics, the new uni...
Surviving the Supply Chain Arena
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The ...
Time to Return to Just-in-Time?
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Wisdom is given equally to everybody. The point is whether one can exercise it." - Taiichi Ohno, The "Ten Precepts" The supply chain profession has r...
Case Dismissed: Byron Allen v. McDonald's
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On February 2, 2024, news broke on one of the court cases we've been following for a while. In May of 2023, two of the companies owned by Byron Allen,...
Killer App: The UK Post Office Scandal
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In today's digital age, jokes are often made at technology's expense. Computers don't like switching from one virtual meeting platform to another. Som...
Savings v. Safety in Aircraft Manufacturing
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On January 5th, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 left Portland, Oregon en route to Ontario, California. Just minutes into the flight, the Boeing 737 Max 9 ...
The Drone Final Mile Becomes Reality
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted that drone deliveries would be a reality in five years. More than 10 years later, they are still largely...