Getting your finished goods to customers damage-free is key, but it never hurts the bottom line to do that cost effectively and in an environmentally friendly manner. Intel accomplished all of that by changing how it packaged its products.

A state-of-IT-risk survey being conducted by APQC seeks to examine supply chain organizations' experience with IT risks and the steps organizations are taking to identify, quantify and manage these challenges.

Significant effort and dollars are invested in lean initiatives each year in manufacturing plants across the United States. These investments can yield significant production and profitability gains if done properly.

As the manufacturing industry spins its web across the world more and more, the network connecting businesses and their partners become much more complex. One of these areas most impacted is a company's supply chain, the main catalyst of one's ability to produce and distribute their products as efficiently and to as large and diverse of a customer base as possible. While this broadening supply chain ability certainly brings along many benefits, the ability to manage risk, particularly in the area of quality, becomes quite challenging.

Lean is one of the biggest management ideas of the past 50 years. No less than Ford's original assembly line, it has transformed how leading companies think about operations - starting in assembly plants and other factory settings and moving more recently into services ranging from retailing and health care to financial services, IT, and even the public sector. Yet despite lean's trajectory, broad influence, and level of general familiarity among senior executives, it would be a mistake to think that it has reached its full potential.

Analyst Insight: Supply chain transformation requires a business-aligned supply chain strategy and change management prowess. At its core, it is about change. Gartner defines supply chain transformation as a step function change in supply chain performance that is sustained for more than one year. Data from 30 in-depth interviews, hundreds of inquiries and interactions with Gartner clients during the past 18 months revealed the key drivers of supply chain transformations. - Michael Dominy, Research Director, Gartner Supply Chain Leaders