Brian W. Hagen, managing director of the Decision Empowerment Institute, explains why supply-chain risk management has failed as a decision-making tool for many companies.

Syncron International AB, a provider of supply-chain and price-optimization technology, has released its 2012 solution suite.

Webgistix Corp., a provider of order-fulfillment technology for electronic commerce, has integrated its SmartFill platform with the online shopping cart of BigCommerce. As a result, the vendor said, retailers can build online stores in BigCommerce environments with two-day ground delivery of e-commerce orders to more than 98 percent of U.S. consumers.

Wavelink Corp. has released Velocity, a mobile browser which provides fast delivery of Web-based applications to rugged mobile devices.

Wipro Technologies has launched m-eXecute, a new mobility application for the manufacturing sector.

Swisslog Logistics Inc. is now offering Click+Pick, a high-speed order-fulfillment system designed for the U.S. electronic commerce market.

Descartes Systems Group has acquired the assets of Infodis B.V., a Netherlands-based vendor of transportation-management system (TMS) software.

Dr. Chaman L. Jain, professor of economics in the Tobin College of Business at St. John's University, talks about how the demand-planning function has changed in his decades of observing global supply chains.

Too many companies are still plagued by a "siloed" mentality which keeps various functions from collaborating fully on demand planning. But Arnold Mark Wells, principal of End-to-End Analytics, sees reason for hope.