Following negative numbers in four of the last five months, import volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to grow 1.7 percent in August over the same month last year and should continue to see gains through the holiday season and the remainder of 2013, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. The year is expected to end with a 2.4-percent increase over 2012.

Retail has an $800bn problem, according to research firm IHL Group. That is the collective cost of inventory distortion in out-of-stocks and overstocks among retailers today, and it could increase same-store sales by 9.2 percent if completely fixed.

Logistics service provider Samuel Shapiro & Co. Inc. has created Shapiro University, to supply employees and customers with educational training.

Datalogic ADC has made available voice-picking technology for its mobile computers.

Having completed 16 acquisitions of small logistics companies in the past seven years, Echo Global Logistics knows something about successful takeover strategies. CEO Doug Waggoner talks about the company's growth-through-acquisition initiatives.

Companies that want to reduce their carbon footprint need to pay attention to the energy they use. But at least as important - and in some cases even more so - is paying attention to the energy used by links in their supply chain.

Remember the early days of cell phones when a new model seemed to appear every week and each one looked dramatically different? This is typical of a new product market. Initially, wildly different variants are released and tested in the market, but eventually they converge on a common core set of features. That is, a dominant design emerges from the pack that becomes the de facto standard. Is a similar process redefining logistics in the US?