Gore Fabrics says it will eliminate perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) of environmental concern from its products by 2023.

Challenge: The Operations VP of an oil and pipeline construction company recently admitted there was a time when he wondered if his company's cargo insurance policy was worth it. The company sources goods from around the world, moves cargo by multiple modes and runs a supply chain through some of the world's most high-risk countries. Thanks to meticulous packing and some good luck, they'd had very few supply chain incidents over 11 years. Until one summer. That June, a truckload of welding equipment heading to Moscow caught fire. The $809,000 shipment was a total loss. One month later, a cargo ship carrying two of the company's containers, worth $150,000, caught fire. Those containers were also a total loss.

Resilinc has released its EventWatch Annual Report to assess the most impactful supply chain events of 2016, according to the software company for supply chain resiliency. The report tracks information from the company's supplier network and reviews incidents by risk type, industry, geography, severity, and seasonality.

Global supply chain risk reached its highest level in 24 years as globalisation fell out of favour and risk increased across Western Europe, according to the CIPS Dun & Bradstreet Risk Index for the end of 2016.

Challenge: A major U.S. club store chain wanted a solution for more efficient cross docking.

To truly understand the peculiar nature of the department store business, consider that Sears could outlive Macy's, at least as an independent company.

Company processes are disconnected because their supply chain planning has grown up in a siloed manner, says John Sicard, president and CEO of Kinaxis. Consequently, it's futile to follow that model and think you can optimize the supply chain one link at a time.