For a new report on supply chain excellence, an assistant and I waded through spreadsheet after spreadsheet of data for the last three weeks and contrasted the progress of the high-tech, consumer products, food, pharmaceutical and industrial industries. The storyline of the report is that ONLY the high-tech industry is making progress on what I call the Supply Chain Effective Frontier - effectively balancing progress on growth, profitability, cycles and complexity. The rest of the industries are either stuck or moving backwards. Consumer packaged goods, food and chemical manufacturers are stuck and pharmaceutical and industrial companies are losing ground and moving backwards.

BNSF Railway Co. will add another 14 special rail cars to carry Boeing 737 fuselages in coming months to match Boeing's rising production of its most popular aircraft model. The addition will bring the total number of such BNSF rail cars to 99.

International trade and cooperation has become a key driver of small business success, according to an in-depth and wide-ranging study by IHS and DHL Express.

Integrating supply chain planning and execution is vital to today's businesses, but 80 percent of the data that most companies need to achieve this integration lies outside their four walls. Mark Cosway, vice president of industry sales at GT Nexus, explains a new approach to solving this problem.

One of the most constant staples of science fiction is its view of the automated world of the future. Whether it was the giants of the genre (H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Jules Verne), animated movies or the Tomorrowland section at the Disney properties, all envisioned a world where manual labor was largely replaced by intelligent machines rapidly performing dull, repetitive tasks.

Laura Dionne, director of worldwide operations, and J.P. Swanson, systems architect, at TriQuint Semiconductor, describe how the installation of RapidResponse from Kinaxis is helping the company transform operations planning and improve inventory control.