Prof. Yossi Sheffi joins Bloomberg Business Hour to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on businesses, supply chain management, and risk management. “In general, over the last 50 years, supply chain has changed dramatically, infusing more and more technology into the operation,” says Sheffi.
Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Page about how supply chains are being adapted for changing market pressures. Companies “learned a lot of things that they didn’t think were possible. This means companies can do more than they thought was possible,” he said. “They have learned how to be nimble, and that may be the most important lesson.”
Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick spotlights Prof. Yossi Sheffi’s new book, “The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, AI, and the Future of Work.” McKendrick writes that Sheffi emphasizes the need to "better understand the supply chains on which our businesses and society depend, and our conception of supply chains needs to be broadened — from product and parts delivery networks to the very essence of organizations themselves.”
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Yossi Sheffi examines several strategies companies could use to help improve supply chain sustainability, including redesigning last-mile deliveries, influencing consumer choices and incentivizing returnable containers. “Supply chains can be designed to reduce emissions from operations and to reorient their buying behavior in support of carbon emissions reductions,” writes Sheffi.
Katin Miller ’99, general manager for the Amazon fulfillment center in Fall River, speaks with Boston 25 reporter Robert Goulston about how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted holiday shopping. “What has changed a lot is people buy bigger things online than they used to,” says Miller. “Every year is bigger than the previous year so these are record breaking volumes absolutely.”
Research Scientist David Correll speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Cheryl Winokur Munk about the challenges companies are facing as they try to improve supply-chain sustainability. “Doing better at sustainability involves being closer and sharing information with some of your supply base,” says Correll. “There’s value to unlock through supplier development and collaboration in terms of innovation and resilience.”
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, explores how automation could ease the supply chain crisis. “Automation in these settings doesn’t mean replacing employees, but developing more robust inventory management software and using systems like scanners and conveyors that make our jobs easier,” writes Rus. “This would enable warehouse workers to focus on other more detail-oriented roles, from overseeing the operation of forklifts to improving the efficiencies of distribution centers.”
At MIT’s AI Policy Forum Summit, which was focused on exploring the challenges facing the implementation of AI technologies across a variety of sectors, SEC Chair Gary Gensler and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher discussed the impact of AI on the world of finance. “If someone is relying on open-AI, that's a concentrated risk and a lot of fintech companies can build on top of it,” Gensler said. “Then you have a node that's every bit as systemically relevant as maybe a stock exchange."
David HC Correll, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, writes for The Hill about how environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria impacts global supply chain managers and their sustainability efforts. “From 2020 to 2021, we observed that investors were by far the fastest-growing driver of sustainability pressure on firms,” writes Correll. “At the same, the understanding of what exactly ESG and supply chain sustainability entails changes depending on the geography, industry and year that we ask.”
Alumni Mahmoud Ghulman and Aziz Alghunaim co-founded Nash, a platform that allows businesses to select specific delivery providers based on price and availability, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “By removing the technical, logistical, and operational overhead associated with offering a reliable delivery experience, Nash helped hundreds of businesses access new customers and revenue streams,” says Ghulman.
Forbes contributor Laurence Kotlikoff spotlights the work of Institute Prof. Peter Diamond. Diamond’s work, notes Kotlikoff, clarified “that there are many levels of employment at which supply equals demand, including many that are very low.”
Boston Magazine’s Spencer Buell highlights the MIT Banana Lounge, a student-run operation that provides free bananas and also serves as a multi-functional meeting space for the community. “Of course, this being MIT, the students have totally optimized their free-tropical-fruit operation to get it down to (what else?) a science,” writes Buell. “Their commitment to smart banana storage and analysis of supply chains, not to mention documenting the merits of bananas over, say, apples, is truly something to behold. More data is involved than you would think.”
According to Prof. Yossi Sheffi, increasing customer demand is the driving force behind the supply chain bottlenecks impacting the global delivery network. “The smoking gun for consumer demand as the main culprit is that bottlenecks didn’t emerge as a significant hurdle until spring of 2021, says Sheffi…That was after the federal government has juiced spending by sending three rounds of stimulus checks to most households,” writes Paul Davidson for USA Today.
Ella Peinovich ’12 co-founded Powered by People, a wholesale e-commerce platform based in Kenya that connects small brands to global markets, reports Annie Njanja for TechCrunch. “We are providing these businesses with new visibility into the specialty retail market in North America,” says Peinovich.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Prof. Yossi Sheffi notes that “just-in-time” (JIT) supply chains can help improve product quality and manufacturing processes, leading to reduced inefficiency. JIT “reinforces resilience because it strengthens the relationships along the supply chain between companies, their suppliers and customers,” writes Sheffi. “Close relationships allow companies to react collaboratively to supply-chain disruptions.”