Heavy-duty truck parts now
available via … Amazon.com?

These days, you can order just about anything from the online retail giant Amazon.com: books, music, dish towels, truck parts … truck parts?

Yes, indeed. Navistar Parts has announced that it now sells truck and bus parts through Amazon’s e-commerce platform. Buyers can use Amazon’s search capabilities to locate items by type, price, make, and model, as well as view suggestions for products that complement their selection, according to Patti Corso, Navistar Parts’ e-commerce manager. They also have their choice of shipping methods (next day, two-day, and ground) and payment options, including Paypal and Amazon.com gift cards.

“ Amazon.com is a known, trusted online retailer that will help us connect with customers on a whole new level,” Corso says.

Navistar Parts’ Partsmart collection includes more than 700,000 parts for all makes of medium- and heavy-duty trucks. They can be purchased online at www.amazon.com/Partsmart as well as at www.partsmartparts.com. ;

Article details “brutal” working
conditions at Amazon warehouse

Amazon.com’s fulfillment operation itself made the news recently, and the report was less than flattering. A Sept. 17 investigative report in the Allentown, Pa., newspaper The Morning Call detailed possible health and safety violations at the e-commerce giant’s Lehigh Valley warehouses. In the lengthy article “Inside Amazon’s Warehouse,” reporter Spencer Soper documented complaints by warehouse associates about working conditions. In all, Soper interviewed 20 current and former employees, some who described brutal heat and inadequate ventilation as well as productivity demands they could rarely meet.

According to the article, an emergency room doctor called federal regulators in June after treating several Amazon warehouse workers for heat-related problems. The article also described Amazon’s response to that and similar complaints, including additional safety measures and facility upgrades the company put in place and policy changes regarding performance “ demerits” assessed against those who leave because of the heat. The last half of the article discusses difficulties some employees encountered in trying to meet productivity demands they said were impossible to fulfill and which led to their being fired.

The lengthy article can be viewed online at http://articles.mcall.com/2011-09-17/news/mc-allentown- amazon-complaints-20110917_ 1_warehouse-workers-heat- stress-brutal-heat/9. Companion pieces include correspondence between Amazon and OSHA as well as copies of complaints workers filed with the agency. ;

inbound

Interested in trying “vested outsourc-
ing” but don’t know where to start? A
new book, The Vested Outsourcing
Manual: A Guide for Creating Successful
Business and Outsourcing Agreements,
can help. The manual outlines a
methodology for cre-
ating an outsourcing
agreement in which
both parties are
mutually invested in a
successful outcome.
Kate Vitasek, a facul-
ty member at the
University of
Tennessee’s Center for
Executive Education,
wrote the book togeth-
er with Jeanette
Nyden, Jacqueline
Crawford, and
Katherine Kawamoto.
The manual draws on research conduct-
ed by the University of Tennessee with
the U.S. Air Force on supply chain out-
sourcing and serves as a companion piece
to Vitasek’s earlier work, Vested
Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will
Transform Outsourcing.
The methodology described in the
book provides a template that parties to
an outsourcing agreement can use to
help create a partnership based on true
collaboration and mutual gain. It also
explains ways companies can share
their evolving expertise, manage
change, and encourage each other to
innovate while managing risk.

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, the hardcover edition of The Vested Outsourcing Manual: A Guide for Creating Successful Business and Outsourcing Agreements sells for $85. For more information or to order, go to http://us.macmillan.com/thevestedout-sourcingmanual or www.vestedout-sourcing.com/books/. ; Outsourcing for mutual