MIT Supply Chain Frontiers

As global supply chains face new waves of political uncertainty, regulatory change, and economic pressure, one thing remains clear: sustainability still matters. The latest State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report from the MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab reveals that despite federal environmental rollbacks and shifting investor priorities, companies continue to see sustainability as central to long-term success.

In this episode...

Emerging markets play an essential role in global supply chains, providing much of the food, raw materials, and labor that keep the world running. But they also face unique challenges: fragmented systems, limited infrastructure, and volatile economies. At the same time, these regions hold immense potential for innovation, resilience, and growth if their logistics systems can adapt to meet rising pressures from climate change, geopo...

Self-driving cars have been heralded by many as the future of transportation—promising safer roads, reduced traffic, and greater mobility for all. Yet despite rapid advancements in technology and a surge in assistive driving features, acceptance of full vehicle automation remains elusive. As the public grapples with questions of trust, safety, and responsibility, the road to widespread adoption of automated vehicles is anything but...

Sustainability has become an imperative for many companies—but in the face of regulatory rollbacks and budget cuts, are those goals here to stay? In this episode, we explore how companies can meaningfully pursue sustainability, even amid shifting political and economic pressures. We discuss growing public support for sustainability, the role of data and modeling in shaping corporate sustainability strategies, and how companies can ...

In recent years, online education has come to the forefront as an alternative to traditional education programs. Its increasing prominence reflects its adaptability, flexibility, affordability, and far-reaching scale. As the global workforce stands to undergo significant changes in the next 5-10 years due to digitalization, advancements in AI, and automation, employers are increasingly valuing skills over degrees. For workers, this...

In this episode we sit down with Dr. Matthias Winkenbach, Director of Research at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, Alejandro González, Software Business Unit Director at Mecalux, and Iñaki Fernández, Chief Technology Officer at Mecalux.

Mecalux, a provider of warehouse management solutions, is a founding research partner of the new MIT Intelligent Logistics Systems Lab, which is at the forefront of advancing logis...

Vehicle routing is one of the most well-understood, extensively studied problems in both history and academia—it's been studied by academics since the early 1800s. Yet 200 years later, optimal efficiency remains just out of reach. And given the enormous increase in pressure for consumer expectations in recent years, that remaining "last mile" of vehicle routing  efficiency could, on a global scale, make a huge difference to a huge ...

In this episode, we sit down with members of the MIT Low Income Firms Transformation (LIFT) Lab: Director Josué Velázquez Martínez, Postdoctoral Researcher Sreedevi Rajagopalan, and Doctoral Student Fabio Castro.

We discuss the LIFT Lab's work empowering micro-retailers and nanostores in emerging markets to lift themselves out of poverty. These retailers, while making up an overwhelming majority of retail business in their regions,...

Warehouses are undergoing a fundamental transformation—in response to the explosion of growth in the e-commerce space and worldwide large-scale supply chain disruptions, warehouses have gone from places simply for goods to sit to highly interconnected, automated hubs of activity. Warehouses of the future leverage new technologies in automation and digitalization to enhance precision, flexibility, and efficiency to adapt quickly to ...

On this episode, we're joined by Melanie Nuce-Hilton, SVP for Innovation and Partnerships at GS1 US, a nonprofit standards organization best known for administering the Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode—and celebrating its fiftieth anniversary right around the same time as MIT CTL. Melanie talks all about the history of supply chain standards over the last 50 years, including the UPC barcode, RFID, and others. And she also discu...

MIT CTL Research Scientist David Correll joins us to share findings from the State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2023. Pressure on firms to make their supply chains more sustainable has increased over the past four years and isn't going anywhere, though the distinct areas of sustainability on which that pressure focuses are constantly changing. Indeed, sustainability is complex and contains multitudes. The report also takes a look...

In this episode, MIT CTL Director Yossi Sheffi, an expert with nearly five decades of experience in the supply chain and logistics areas, sits down with Susan Lacefield, Executive Editor of Supply Chain Quarterly. Yossi and Susan discuss the miracle of modern global supply chains—a magic conveyor belt that moves goods from mines and forests to supermarket shelves. They also discuss supply chain resilience in the face of major disru...

In this episode, we are joined by Kathy Fulton, Executive Director of the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), who discusses her work connecting private-sector resources with disaster response needs: a "gray sky" response, after a disaster hits. For instance, if a supplier has excess food they need to offload, ALAN will connect them with a warehouse with the capacity to accept the delivery. ALAN forges p...

In the wake of a disaster, restoring supply chains can be critical in assuring that the most vital needs of affected communities are met.

In this episode, Tim Russell and Lauren Finegan of the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab discuss the fundamentals of humanitarian logistics and disaster response—including how to best build resilient communities, how the public and private sectors can work together for optimal disaster response, ...

Supply chain design has traditionally been conducted with only one dimension in mind: cost minimization. The conventions of supply chain design date largely from the 1990s. But major technological strides have been made in the years since, allowing for much more complex considerations to be taken into account. So most companies, by using this obsolete approach, are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Today's episode f...

Truckload transportation services procurement is costly and time-intensive. These months-long procurement events typically result in thousands of contracts between shippers and carriers. The contracts cover each of the shipper’s product distribution lanes or origin-destination pairs.

Due to truckload supply and demand uncertainty, shippers often adopt a coverage strategy to secure contracted capacity on combinations of lanes to mee...

This episode marks the second installment of research scientist David Correll speaking with the 2021–22 MIT CTL military fellows: US Army Col. Joe Parker, Lt. Col. Brian Young, and Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Stephen J. Luebbert.

Today’s conversation is all about empathetic leadership. Parker, Young, and Luebbert discuss how leading teams in high-stress environments like military combat requires empathy and humility. They rev...

In today’s episode, research scientist David Correll speaks with the 2021–22 MIT CTL military fellows: US Army Col. Joe Parker, Lt. Col. Brian Young, and Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Stephen J. Luebbert. The fellows discussed their experiences in the military and the MIT SCM program.

For written and downloadable transcripts visit ctl.mit.edu

Their conversation explores the differences and similarit...

Join MIT Global SCALE Connect for an in-depth conversation with Paul Granadillo, SVP Global Supply Chain at Moderna. MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi speaks with Paul about how the pandemic vaccine response reshaped manufacturing, business, and supply chains at Moderna.

Mr. Granadillo shares his professional experiences learned from joining the company during a time of growth. He describes some of the methods Moderna uses to meet its log...