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Warehouse in the News Newsroom Notes: Is the era of high inventories behind us? Future of WMS mapped out in Oracle Forecast Is Your Logistics Strategy Keeping Pace with Your Manufacturing Efficiency? Finding Agility in your Workforce: Are you prepared to meet the next market shift? Materials handling clockspeed More Warehouse News Is Your Logistics Strategy Keeping Pace with Your Manufacturing Efficiency? U.S. manufacturers continue to invest in world-class technology and innovation, as a growing number of businesses choose to expand U.S.-based production — or return manufacturing from Asia. All Resources Over the past 16 months, the subject of high—some may even refer to them as “bloated”—inventory levels has been a major theme within freight transportation circles. And for good reason, given that the higher the inventory levels the less amount of freight there is on the roads, rails, in the air and aboard U.S.-bound container vessels. The many challenges related to increased inventory levels were made very clear in the results of an April 2016 Logistics Management reader survey that found the following: 56.8% of respondents noted that their companies were still dealing with high or excess inventories, while 43.2% of respondents said they weren’t; 77.9% of respondents indicated that it has been an issue for more than 12 months, and 7.7% said it’s been intact for 9 months to 12 months; and on a shorter time scale, only 5.8% said that it has been an issue for 3-6 months, 1% reporting less than 3 months. The strains of high inventories were also made clear in recent government data, including GDP, the inventory-to-sales ratio (which is derived from dividing the number of sales compared to available inventory), and, of course, declining freight transportation volumes. However, in recent months, it appears that things are trending in the other direction, […]