For logistics-driven companies, advances in mobile computing and communications in the last decade now are leading us toward what Gartner has called true supply chain execution convergence. The potential gains - lower costs, increased efficiency, less waste, reduced environmental impact, higher customer satisfaction and overall improved profitability - are simply too big to ignore. However, corporate executives and planners should proceed carefully in positioning their companies to get the highest return on their investment in converging supply chain execution technologies.

Apriso, a vendor of global manufacturing software, has made available Apriso for Paperless Manufacturing.

Basware has joined with MasterCard to develop an electronic-payment application which speeds up payment to suppliers upon invoice approval, while extending payment terms for buyers.

Widely divergent lifecycles for electronics products are creating increasing demand for obsolete and end-of-life components, which sometimes end up being sourced from the gray market. Let's look in detail why that is happening and how product lifecycles are creating a gap in the electronic components supply chain that is in danger of being filled by counterfeit components.

Many large, global organizations are concerned about the risk of serious physical disruption of their supply chains due to high-impact natural disasters, extreme weather or political turmoil. Over the past two years supplier risk has been receiving more attention from organizations as natural disasters, and their effects on global supply chains, have had wide media exposure.

Have you ever wondered why it is so easy for improved processes to go back to how they were performing before improvement? Why it always seems that, even if everybody follows the new instructions, the process still produces defects? Why it's so hard to maintain the benefits in the process after the projects are done?

More than 80 percent of the world's population resides in what is known as "emerging markets". This group of countries represents a diverse collection of economies from China to Peru and Ethiopia to Kazakhstan.