The future of commerce in products and services lies in sharing. Is that a good thing?

In the evolving supply chain, technology has allowed for more rapid and productive dissemination of critical information between organizational partners upstream and downstream. While this increased flexibility, scalability and efficiency of operations provides economies of scale and scope on the revenue and expense side for businesses, the tradeoff becomes a burgeoning access terminal for cybercriminals to poach critical intelligence flows.

Grupo Herdez is one of Mexico's leading manufacturers and distributors of grocery products and is a pioneer there in Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment. Eduardo Cantu explains some of the challenges to CPFR implementation in Latin America.

Lightweight, high-performance metals leader Alcoa has announced plans to further expand its global aerospace business by acquiring privately held TITAL. The acquisition will strengthen Alcoa's global position to capture increasing demand for advanced jet engine components made of titanium.

A manufacturing production index for Latin America as a whole is expected to show this year experienced no growth - instead, it is forecast to decline a slight 0.1 percent. This challenging regional picture masks sizable differences across countries, however. The poor performance of the index published by the Manufacturers' Alliance for Productivity and Innovation Foundation is explained by recessions in Brazil and Argentina that have offset the good performance of Mexican factories.

There was a time, not too long ago, when retail industry analysts were predicting that online merchandisers would soon stop offering free shipping on orders. How wrong they were.

Studies document that innovation in engineering and production works best when the two disciplines are contiguous. Pairing the two was problematic for one company until an online marketplace came to the rescue.