Given the current capacity crunch, and the huge amounts of investment capital pouring into transportation and logistics technology, there is tremendous discussion on how technology innovation will impact the industry and, more specifically, 3PLs. What will be the impact of digital freight on freight brokers? Will artificial intelligence and machine learning disrupt whole industries? Will technology drive and displace whole categories of jobs?
Back in 2003, when RFID commercialization was accelerating out of MIT, major retailers announced an initiative that required all suppliers to tag pallet deliveries with RFID. The whole supply chain was going to be transformed. Not only would receiving be streamlined, but companies would also have much greater visibility into real-time inventory, and barcodes were going to die. Now, over 15 years later, there are still a lot of barcodes. Point being, what seems like a no-brainer often runs into unforeseen challenges, and how things develop are very hard to predict.