Sysco CEO predicts food inflation will slow in 2023 | Amazon ends 3-year test of home delivery robots | BlueLinx pays $67M for Vandermeer Forest Products
Sysco CEO Kevin Hourican says product availability should improve next year, alongside a decrease in food price inflation "at both the grocery store and in our business of food away from home." Hourican also discusses how the distributor will change through its Recipe for Growth plan, whether Sysco is interested in more acquisitions and how his experience as a college volleyball player taught him to learn from defeat.
Amazon has ended its work on the Scout home delivery robot program after three years, with plans to move the team to new jobs in the company, a spokesperson said. The company began testing the cooler-sized delivery robots in Seattle and later expanded the test to three other US markets.
8 Uncomfortable Truths for Industrial Organizations This infographic presents a radical new business model by way of 8 uncomfortable truths. For many, it's heresy. We believe embracing these 8 truths will quickly give you an unassailable lead on your competitors, here and abroad. Download infographic
Amazon and FedEx are switching fleets to electric vehicles, but maintenance for EVs presents challenges such as keeping batteries above a 20% charge to extend the life of EVs and the increasing demands on the electric grid. "Grid capacity will need to grow to support the rising number of electric vehicles -- commercial and otherwise -- on the road in the years to come," said Bill Cawein, FedEx's manager for technology and integration and US vehicle maintenance.
The number of trucking employees in the US totaled 1,580,800 in September, 11,400 fewer than the 1,592,200 in August, according to the Labor Department. Overall transportation and warehousing employment was mostly unchanged, with a slight loss of 7,900 jobs, while air transportation added 3,000 jobs.
A game-changing SCM eBook. Are you ready for supply chain towers? Are you building digital twins? Is your supply chain resilient, adaptive, and/or market-driven? A new eBook gives new insights into what's next in SCM. Download it here.
Business-to-business marketers should prioritize marketing that's memorable over the chase for clicks, says Jon Lombardo, global head of research at LinkedIn's B2B Institute. Lombardo explains strategies to make memorable campaigns, such as using brand characters, and advises, "[Y]ou don't need the best product, you just need a better product that everybody knows."
Leaders can assist employees battling burnout by helping them develop skills to regulate their emotions, feel more empathy and become aware of thought patterns that help or hinder performance, write Rengin Firat, Amelia Haynes, Ashita Goswami and Jean-Marc Laouchez of Korn Ferry. "In adjusting to the 'new normal,' leaders must reject the notion that a burned-out employee population is an acceptable norm," they write.
Maintaining an open mind, trying different product ideas until one stuck and shunning short-term gains in favor of long-term growth helped Jonathan Barouch, CEO of Local Measure, guide his company through the worst of the pandemic. "On reflection, the calls I made that kept the long-term strategy front of mind moved us forward, while some of the quick wins I signed off on disproportionately distracted the company from its goals," Barouch writes.
The NAW Large Company Roundtables are an exclusive community of thought leaders from Large Company distribution enterprises who congregate to network with noncompeting peers in multiple lines of trade on key issues. The companies invited into this community are from distribution firms with annual sales between $100 million and $999 million. Register today!