As head of IT for Global Supply Chain Solutions at Ryder, a major third-party logistics provider, Gregory Knott well understands the issues surrounding technology integration between third parties and customers. Here he offers useful advice to outsourcing partners on both sides of a contract.

Eight p.m. in the "war room" of Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems: 150 people from all over the world are on a conference call. The topic is a supply outage of trocars, a medical device used in microscopic surgery. Someone on the line, clearly untroubled by the crisis, speaks up. "It's just a trocar," he says.

When global automotive supplier Inteva Products was spun off from its parent company, the new enterprise opted for a cloud-based ERP solution. Ben Stewart discusses this decision and its benefits to the supply chain and other functional areas.

True supplier collaboration can drive innovation and value, but success depends upon a foundation of trust that enables partners to effectively deal with such issues as intellectual property rights. Jon Washington, director of product sourcing and global procurement at Diebold, shares his company's approach.

Purolator International has introduced a new business-to-consumer (B2C) shipping service between the U.S. and Canada.