Challenge: A CPG manufacturer of home appliances needed to control labor expenses and identified a 500,000-sq.-ft. distribution center as an opportunity to streamline. The facility ships to three regional centers and an overflow warehouse.

Swiss corporate giant Nestle has pledged broad new animal welfare standards for its worldwide suppliers, becoming the latest major food company looking to limit some of the harmful effects of its global footprint.

Challenge: Analyzing historical transportation data revealed a high number of small volume, prepaid shipments from nationwide vendors to the company's West Coast DC. Software modeling suggested that a network of pool points (cross-docking facilities) could yield substantial savings.

Challenge: Our client is a unique and well-positioned specialty retailer in the wedding gown industry, competing in a large and stable industry with over 300 stores in the United States and Canada, but back in 2005 their business was outgrowing their capacity, they were at a crossroads regarding how to grow, design, improve and optimize their operations.

Challenge: The sourcing team within a global marine engineering firm was challenged with standardizing its temporary personnel procurement process, specifically for crew staff for its fleet of 100 maritime vessels. As the team collected global requirements, it became clear that a number of factors would add complexity throughout the process, as there were 34 different staffing vendors with multiple compensation frameworks fulfilling the 46 crew positions utilized in 9 geographical regions.

Challenge: Adopt a solution that can be easily rolled out to buyer and category manager desktops throughout the organization, plus scale across other departments in the enterprise.

Challenge: One of the world's largest snack companies needed a rapid deployment consisting of JDA WMS and Cloud Services for a new 3PL site. The customer did not have the technical WMS expertise nor the hardware infrastructure.

In the debate over why the U.S. has been so slow to emerge from the Great Recession, many have laid the blame on what's become known as the skills gap: Despite an abundance of workers, too many simply aren't qualified to fill the jobs available. Even now that hiring is running at its fastest clip since the late 1990s, business and industry groups such as the Chamber of Commerce continue to emphasize the damage the skills gap is doing to the economy. So do a lot of consulting firms.