With high customer expectations for service and the need for organizations to secure business continuity, businesses must develop a collaborative approach to supply chain management. Your business must be able to orchestrate suppliers, assemblers, and distributors, creating a singular view of goods and services among all entities that touch the supply chain.

Steve Rogers, vice president of sales with Hannibal Industries, lays out the major issues facing the material-handling industry today.

Kenco, a third-party logistics services provider, has developed a set of dashboards to measure companies' sustainability efforts in their distribution, transportation and supply-chain activities.

Many manufacturers that have applied lean concepts to their operations find that although they do achieve significant savings, their production costs remain high. This is, in most cases, attributable to material costs, which, depending on industry can range from 60 to 80 percent of total production costs. The challenge for these manufacturers is to discover how to extend lean concepts and practices beyond the walls of their own factories.