Ensuring product quality is of utmost importance to the pharmaceutical industry, and appropriate controls and oversight are required for both the drug-manufacturing process and the supply chain for pharmaceutical ingredients.

Hamish Brewer, chief executive officer of JDA Software, was giving a speech at the Economic Club of Phoenix last year, when the topic of global inventory levels came up. The question he posed: How much stuff is currently in transit or socked away in warehouses the world over? The answer: Nobody really knows.

From the smallest business decisions to the largest ones, risk influences all that we do. But taking a risk is not exactly like spinning a roulette wheel, where luck is the primary ingredient for success. With use of the right tools, risks can carefully be calculated, controlled and managed, greatly reducing the variable of bad luck.

A combination of rebounding sales and an unprecedented number of new models in the works has stretched the auto parts supply chain so taut that the entire industry is holding its collective breath that it does not snap and jeopardize the recovery.