By Shefali Kapadia

If someone told Trey Travis five years ago he’d be walking the floor of a supercomputing show, he wouldn’t have believed them.

Georgia-based Southeastern Hose, where Travis is VP of operations, manufactures corrugated metal hoses and traditionally serves customers in industries such as steel and petrochemicals. But the hoses have another purpose: providing cooling and exhaust for data centers. 

As the adoption of artificial intelligence spurred an acceleration in data center construction, orders for his hoses started to trickle in, turning into a deluge last year with another swell of growth since January.

“It’s not that the dam opened,” Travis said. “They just took the dam out of the river and it’s flowing like crazy.”

Continue reading on Manufacturing Dive.

By Shefali Kapadia

Coca-Cola’s holiday ad and Svedka’s Super Bowl commercial share more in common than promoting a beverage — both were generated with the help of AI.

The technology is catching on at consumer goods companies, with marketing leaders adding AI to their processes on both the creative and strategic sides.

As a result, assets and campaigns are coming to fruition faster than they could without AI.

Before AI, it could take Mondelēz International up to 10 weeks — from concept to production — to spin up a six- to eight-second social media video for its Chips Ahoy! character “Chip,” said Jennifer Mennes, VP and global head of digital marketing and strategy at Mondelēz International.

Now, the marketing team can prompt AI and create a video in less than five minutes. After various checks by human members of the team, the total process might take days.

Continue reading on Business Insider.

By Shefali Kapadia

A truck drives out of an Amazon fulfillment center in Joliet, Illinois. Another hauls an intermodal container into a nearby BNSF’s Logistics Park. And another pulls into a Lineage warehouse to pick up a refrigerated load.

It wasn’t always like this in Joliet, located in Will County to the southwest of Chicago. About three decades ago, Will County was “pretty much a sleepy” region, said Don Schaefer, president and CEO of the Mid-West Truckers Association. But thanks to the intermodal container, the county’s proximity to Chicago and an embrace of supply chain infrastructure development, Will County has become a “thriving economic hub,” Schaefer said. 

What was once a quiet county outside Chicago blossomed into a massive freight epicenter. Today, Will County is home to the largest inland port in North America, three intermodal facilities, four interstates and service from five Class 1 railroads, according to the county’s Center for Economic Development. By one estimate, multimodal freight volumes in Will County are projected to reach 600 million tons valued around $1.2 trillion by 2040. 

Continue reading on Trucking Dive.

By Shefali Kapadia

When Karin Hoeing first joined BAE Systems, a U.K.-based global defense, security and aerospace company, nearly eight years ago, she was the only woman on the executive committee. But that wasn’t the only thing that made her stand out: She is German, unlike her mostly British and American male peers at the time, and she had come to BAE Systems from the oil and gas industry rather than an aerospace or defense company.

Hoeing, who is now the director of culture and business transformation in the company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) group, admits that her atypical background led to some awkward meetings and extra work on her part to win over her fellow leaders. But she soon felt at home. “Once you have broken down the first resistance and uncertainty about you, people are very receptive,” she says of her colleagues.

Fast forward to today, and BAE Systems’ C-suite looks very different, with five females and seven males on its executive committee. The company’s progress on this front has led to more equal representation of women across leadership roles, and it’s helped the company earn the No. 25 spot on our list of the World’s Top Companies For Women 2025.

Continue reading on Forbes.

By Shefali Kapadia

When a shipment of refrigerated or frozen goods arrives at one of Lineage’s automated warehouses, machines spring into action. Computer-vision technology scans pallets and logs data on customers, product types, and item descriptions. AI-driven algorithms combine shipment data with historical information to predict when a truck will take the goods out of the warehouse. The technology assigns pallets a spot in the warehouse based on how long they’ll remain in the facility and directs the forklift operator where to go.

This level of technology can improve efficiency in any type of supply chain, but it’s critical in cold warehouses, where goods like frozen foods, fresh produce, and pharmaceuticals are stored. A brief deviation in temperature has the potential to damage a shipment, and warehouse managers don’t want workers spending hours without breaks in sub-zero conditions. This makes accuracy and productivity imperative in the cold chain.

Refrigeration and temperature-sensor technology have been integral to cold chains for decades, but advanced versions are now permeating the industry. Cold-chain providers are ditching manual processes for AI-driven algorithms and exploring digital twins and AI agents to make highly automated operations even more autonomous.

Continue reading on Business Insider.