On July 17, a wide range of third-party products on Amazon showed special pricing: one cent. The pricing glitch was, yet again, caused by some third-party integration and a coding error.
Supply chains are just as susceptible to faddish behavior as anything else. We're social animals, so we tend to follow the crowd - especially if we believe that the crowd has a competitive edge. That's why so many companies flocked to China over the last couple of decades, in search of ever-cheaper sources of production. Or why outsourcing became such a hot trend over that same period of time.
The number of pirate attacks fell sharply in the first half of 2012, led by a drop in Somali piracy, according to the International Maritime Bureau's global piracy report. At the same time, those positive numbers were offset by a worrying increase of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea.
Mike Cleland, vice president of NorthHighland, discusses what biotech and pharma companies need to do to comply with new regulations for tracking products throughout the supply chain.
When rain doesn't fall in Iowa, it's not just Des Moines that starts fretting. Food buyers from Addis Ababa to Beijing all are touched by the fate of the corn crop in the U.S., the world's breadbasket in an era when crop shortages mean riots.
The risk of counterfeit parts and products is no stranger to the semiconductor and electronics industry. Recent news spanning industries has underscored the reach of the problem of substandard, non-conforming and counterfeit parts in the wider, global supply chain.
Thirty-six percent of all targeted attacks (58 per day) during the last six months were directed at businesses with 250 or fewer employees, according to the June 2012 Intelligence Report from Symantec. The figure was 18 percent at the end of December 2011.
In a position paper, the Global Air Cargo Advisory Group warned against the issuance of ad-hoc directives about the utilization of advance electronic data for airfreight security. Instead, the coalition encouraged governments around the world to take cues from the industry and look to the Air Cargo Advance Screening pilot program currently under way in the U.S. for guidance.
We like the term "supply chain" because it suggests a tightly interlinked series of steps that results in the uninterrupted flow of product from the raw-materials stage all the way to the consumer. But the word "chain" also evokes a burden, and that's how many companies have come to view their operations in recent years. Hence the mania for outsourcing everything from design and manufacturing to logistics.
Business uses for YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are fast catching up to the leisure uses that have been their primary raison d'etre so far, and usage of LinkedIn, which was created as a business tool, keeps soaring.
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