Eighty percent of manufacturers responding to a recent survey rate reducing overall supply chain costs as the number one supply chain priority in the coming year, according to IDC Manufacturing Insights. Nearly 55 percent suggest supply chain agility is second and 52 percent suggest improving product quality and safety is the third-most important priority.

Just when you thought cloud computing couldn't get any more complicated and fraught with hidden gotchas, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue has jumped in to sprinkle taxation magic on your cloud business cases. What the Keystone State did - and other states are likely to follow - doesn't make cloud any less profitable, but the specifics of the cloud deployment could now impact tax costs.

Fair Factories Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization that helps major brands and manufacturers collaborate to ensure cost-effective, well-informed business transactions and improved workplaces worldwide, has enhanced its software and collaboration platform that support a new approach for manufacturing audits.

Everyone wants their business to grow, to broaden its operations within a territory or country and, eventually, across borders to other countries and continents. However, business expansion abroad entails a great deal of forethought, especially with regard to enterprise software applications.

Syncron International AB, a provider of supply-chain and price-optimization technology, has released its 2012 solution suite.

So-called Big Data can be defined as datasets so large and diverse, they break traditional IT infrastructures. What Big Data is, however, isn't as important as what you can do if you harness its potential and uncover new business opportunities through Big Data analytics.

Your sales people need to do the things that work, and they need to repeat them. If something is demonstrably effective in closing a sale, then it should be discovered and shared - and, even if there's just one sales person, it should be identified and utilized. If your selling process has become complex enough that these processes are no longer easily identified, it's time to look at CRM.

Wipro Technologies has launched m-eXecute, a new mobility application for the manufacturing sector.

Dr. Chaman L. Jain, professor of economics in the Tobin College of Business at St. John's University, talks about how the demand-planning function has changed in his decades of observing global supply chains.

Automobile manufacturer Volkswagen Slovakia is tracking its assembled vehicles as they undergo final servicing and inspection processes at its plant in Bratislava, using a real-time location system (RTLS).