Eight corporate teams that demonstrated how their supply chain practices reduced costs, streamlined processes, saved energy, and improved operating efficiencies are finalists in the eighth annual Supply Chain Innovation Award competition presented by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and SupplyChainBrain.

When industrial or construction companies employ radio frequency identification on assets and equipment to manage safety or inventory, tag placement can be a challenging task. For example, tags must be welded, wired or screwed onto such items as lift equipment, storage tanks and steel baskets, in the hope that they will not be broken or removed in the rugged environment they inhabit. And although tags can be built into an asset, thereby protecting them from the outside environment, that increases manufacturing time and cost.

A number of macro-economic developments, such as the expansion of the Panama Canal, are driving changes in supply chain design, says John Trestrail, supply chain solutions manager at LLamasoft. "Supply chain managers are trying to understand the impact of the canal's expansion on cargo flows, especially from Asia to the East Coast," he says.

Accellos Inc., a vendor of supply-chain execution software, has developed version 6.4 of the AccellosOne Warehouse Management System (WMS).

A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Such factories are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.

RedPrairie Corp. has acquired Vortex Connect, a vendor of mobile workforce management technology.

Motorola Solutions has introduced a vehicle-mount mobile computer for use in warehouse and distribution environments.

LeanLogistics, a provider of transportation-management systems, has developed a mechanism for delivering TMS applications to the mid-market.

An effective procurement process begins with having all spend under control, including money spent on logistics and transportation, says Nick Seiersen, president and CEO of Seiersen Enterprise. Overall, such a process should ensure that the right suppliers provide the right products or services on the right terms, he says.

By leveraging truck drivers' cell phone connectivity and location-based applications, Open Mile claims to have become the first freight brokerage to provide accurate and precise information on a truck's location at every point from pickup to delivery. CEO Evan Schumacher says this capability gives shippers a level of confidence in service reliability that previously has been absent from the brokerage industry.