Mike Landry, president of Barkawi Management Consultants, North America, explains the "control tower" approach to supply chain management and why he believes this approach can enable companies to go beyond incremental improvements to real transformational change.

When integrating its two major business units, First Solar partnered with Kinaxis to provide supply and demand planning capabilities, says Shellie Molina, vice president-global supply chain.

At the same time that supply chains are becoming increasingly global and complex, customers are expecting faster than ever service, says Vijay Subramanian, president of Prana Consulting.

Putting Albertsons back together again won't be as easy as it looks. The grocery chain was split in 2006 between Supervalu and private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, with both chains using the same logo in different geographic regions. But on January 10, the two owners decided to reunite what will now be a 650-store chain in a complicated deal that leaves only one thing very clear: These money managers aren't thinking about IT when it comes to reassembling the chain.

Breaking down functional silos to create transparent and responsive end-to-end supply chains has long been an intractable supply chain challenge, but many companies are finding success using a control tower concept that gets everyone working off the same plan and focused on the same outcome. To learn more about this approach, SupplyChainBrain convened a Power Lunch"”a roundtable discussion"”with four experts in the field: Paul Bittinger, former supply chain transformation manager, Procter & Gamble (now retired); Lora Cecere, founder and CEO, Supply Chain Insights; Don Gaspari, director, global materials and inventory, NCR Corp.; and Kirk Munroe, vice president of marketing, Kinaxis.