Having a visual map that overlays a company's key facilities, suppliers and lanes with actual or potential risks helps enable faster reaction to supply chain disruptions, says Chris Kushmaul, director of supply chain solutions at IDV Solutions.

Retailers are moving away from liquidating outdated inventory for a set price of pennies on the dollar, says Jeremy Witte, COO of Genco Marketplace. Instead they are looking to partners to maximize liquidation returns through a network of secondary merchants.

The focus of RFID in the supply chain has shifted from case tagging to item tagging, says Ann Grackin, CEO of ChainLink Research. Grackin explains why this is so and details other areas of the supply chain where RFID is being embraced.

Providing parts and sub-assemblies to automotive production lines is a highly complex activity, requiring rapid, automated sequencing and sophisticated error proofing. Bo Cheng, director of the automotive business at Comprehensive Logistics, explains how his company is keeping pace as automotive volumes return to pre-recession levels.

Picking in a frozen environment with heavy gloves, paper and pencil impaired the productivity and accuracy of operations at Perry's Ice Cream in Akron, N.Y. A voice-picking system from Vocollect enabled Perry's to solve these problems and gain other benefits.

Manufacturers are becoming more diverse in their product mixes and geographic reach. But they haven't necessarily responded with the kind of initiatives that drive total integration across the supply chain, says Ben Yokell, principal for demand planning with Chainalytics.

Manufacturers are becoming more diverse in their product mixes and geographic reach. But they haven't necessarily responded with the kind of initiatives that drive total integration across the supply chain, says Ben Yokell, principal for demand planning with Chainalytics.

Faced with new challenges in serving global markets, Amgen set out to improve its supply-chain resiliency with the help of a system from Resilinc. Patricia Turney, executive director of supply chain, tells the story.