No organization can avoid coming to grips with the rapidly evolving behavior of consumers and business customers. They check prices at a keystroke and are increasingly selective about which brands share their lives. They form impressions from every encounter and post withering online reviews. These changes present significant organizational challenges, as well as opportunities. The biggest is that all of us have become marketers: the critical moments of interaction, or touch points, between companies and customers are increasingly spread across different parts of the organization, so customer engagement is now everyone's responsibility.

The chief supply chain officer has emerged as a vital partner in the most strategic aspects of managing complex, global companies. In years past, the procurement function (the sourcing of essential products and services on the best possible terms) occupied center stage. But more recently, the relentless focus on driving out costs has taken a backseat to such issues as supply market risk, revenue enhancement and managing complex supplier relationships.

Low U.S. interest rates, positive economic indicators and an increasing demand for prime, well-located logistics property are some of the elements bringing focus to U.S. industrial assets such as warehouses and distribution centers, according to Tim O'Rourke, executive vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle.

The MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation has formed a Manufacturing Technology Advisory Board to bring MIT academia and research together with major technology providers and industry leaders to collaborate on key issues in the U.S. manufacturing industry, such as technology, process innovation, supply chain risk and reshoring enablers.

Blake Johnson, consulting professor with Stanford University, details the value that companies can derive from supply-chain risk and flexibility management, and how sales and operations planning can help.

Vitaly Glozman, partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, outlines the current state and future of supply-chain operations in the biopharmaceuticals industry, with an eye toward achieving both short- and long-term goals.

The majority of consumers in the world's richest markets say they are feeling insecure and anxious and are struggling to save. They have tightened their belts and are buckled in for a sustained period of low or no income growth - a world that feels like the 1930s or the Lost Decade in Japan.

CTL Global Inc. has opened a new warehouse in Bensenville, Ill. The facility was designed to meet the needs of the company's clients while accommodating future growth within its final-mile delivery division, Continental Transportation Solutions.

time:matters, a provider of expedited logistics by air, rail and road, has expanded its service network through cooperation with Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa.

Aberdeen Group has published a slue of new reports from its various practices on such topics as sales and marketing effectiveness, IT infrastructure/storage and virtualization, and supply chain management.