As the logistics industry rapidly integrates connected, smart, and ecosystem-level technologies, predictive and prescriptive analytics promise to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.The recent influx of high-revenue opportunities has drawn blue-chip technology talent into the logistics sector, highlighting the increasing importance of predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation in shaping the future of supply chains.

Recently, fashion retailer H&M began charging its UK customers a small fee for returning online purchases in-store and then hurriedly backtracked on this strategy. Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation found that returns resulted in $816 billion in lost sales for retailers in the United States last year.

Supply chain issues are far from over but Chipotle is expanding into a new market that could heavily impact their fresh food supply. The company recently announced its new expansion strategy to open in smaller towns, but some issues can arise beyond its control.

The length and complexity, the number of geographically distributed firms, as well as the number of products that modern supply chains are tasked with delivering to consumers have grown exponentially over the past several decades. Regional supply chains have transformed into global ones with intellectual property and related proprietary information being dispersed across firms’ extended enterprises.

The Logistics Managers Index (LMI) is a monthly metric of logistics activity in the United States, as measured by a survey of supply chain professionals. Over the past 3 years, a group of supply chain researchers, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), Supply Chain Quarterly, and DC Velocity have been periodically collecting, calculating, and publishing the results of LMI.

Because firms do not operate in isolation, they are bound by the structure of the networks in which they are embedded. This structure has implications on a firm's ability to access resources and utilize them to their advantage. We consider two critical components of this network structure: network power and network cohesion. Both of these network structures can be critical determinants of firm financial success. Yet, to date the extant research has not yet considered the role of network relations in the context of Supply Chain Finance (SCF).