In the past two years, Chinese consumers have opened their wallets and pocketbooks online. Online buying and selling, including group purchasing (through the Chinese equivalents of Groupon), is the second-fastest-growing activity, after microblogging.

Fast food chain McDonald's has employed techniques including $500 staff incentives, 30-percent wind power requirements and lightweight tractor-trailers to help green up its operations, according to a report by the company.

Challenge: Celsis Rapid Detection provides systems that enable companies to more rapidly test and release safe products to market. One leading food products company uses three Celsis instruments in its microbiology lab to test daily production runs.

When IBM announced it was selling its entire POS business to Toshiba TEC for $850m, it was arguably the most explicit sign yet that the retail POS hardware business is on its last legs. Not IBM's POS business, but retail POS activity in general.

Prospects are very bright for manufacturing in the U.S., says Raj Batra, president of the industry automation division at Siemens. Batra, who believes that the U.S. now offers a high-end, innovation-oriented manufacturing environment, cites 30 months of consecutive increases in the PMI index and growth in plant capacity utilization as signs that a renaissance is under way.

Challenge: A fast growing sportswear brand was seeking supply network efficiency and visibility.

Grocery store chain Supervalu Inc. is committing to have 300 stores divert 90 percent or more of their waste from local landfills by the end of the current fiscal year, Feb. 23, 2013).

Challenge: When an opportunity presented itself with a very large retailer looking for a logistics partner and technology platform to manage their inbound business process, our client knew it was time to act.

Challenge: A manufacturer of high value consumer products came to Transport Security, Inc- ENFORCER ® seeking assistance in monitoring at-risk shipments in transit. Transport Security, Inc. implemented their ENFORCER ® Embedded Tracking Technology. The ENFORCER ® Tracking Technology allows the client to embed the technology within their shipment and covertly track their assets via a web -based application.