Supply Chain Management – OM in the News

Ford Slows Battery Expansion for EV Market

A myriad of challenges—both external and internal—are leading automotive giant Ford Motor Company to delay construction of its second electric vehicle (VH) battery plant in Kentucky.

Ford has previously announced two large-scale EV battery plants in Kentucky, with start date of 2025 and 2026, respectively. The first Kentucky EV battery plant is on schedule, but the second plant’s opening is now pushed out with no specific start date.

“Given the dynamic EV environment, we are being judicious about our production and adjusting […]

By James Kirby Easterling|2023-12-06T06:45:24+00:00December 6, 2023|Tags: capacity management, downstream suppliers, efficiency, expansion, forecasting, prediction, supplier relationship, upstream suppliers|

Google and Anthropic: Strategic Partnership

Google will invest $2 billion in Anthropic to further develop Claude 2, a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Claude 2 can summarize up to 75,000 words and is regarded as the most “self-aware” chatbot. It has been trained to be explicit about what it knows and does not know and answers only questions that it has training data to support.

Related: this previous OM in the News post about Amazon and Anthropic leveraging each other’s work on AI.

Video Spotlight: […]

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2023-11-29T03:32:42+00:00November 29, 2023|Tags: competition, innovation, operations strategy, strategy, supply chain partnership|

Airbus Supply Ships Shifting to Wind Power

Airbus is replacing heavy fuel oil with wind power to run its transatlantic supply ship routes between Europe and the U.S..

The new shipping fleet will reduce the company’s average annual transatlantic carbon dioxide emissions by 63%, helping Airbus reach its decarbonization goals by 2030.

Video Spotlight:

Is Wind Power The Future of Shipping? (Oct 8, 2020, Ziroth)

This post is based on The Loadstar article, Airbus opts for wind power as it replaces its […]

By Anita Lee-Post, Ph.D.|2023-11-20T07:14:20+00:00November 15, 2023|Tags: logistics, social and environmental responsibility, supply chain sustainability, sustainability|

Huy Fong’s Sriracha Shortage

In the United States, if you think of sriracha sauce, you immediately think of Huy Fong’s Sriracha Sauce with the rooster on the bottle.

Unfortunately, customers in the U.S. have seen a shortage of Huy Fong’s popular sauce for the last three years. And it may continue.

Part of the problem comes from droughts impacting the production of the red jalapeño peppers that go into the sauce. However, there is more to the story.

For over 28 years, Underwood Farms provided the peppers […]

By Ross L. Fink, Ph.D.|2023-11-08T06:09:21+00:00November 8, 2023|Tags: food supply chain, shortages, supplier relationship|