From self-driving cars, to intelligent assistants on smart phones, to IBM's Watson beating humans at Jeopardy, to potentially autonomous military weapons, the effects of increasingly sophisticated automation are undeniable. With leading companies like Google spending millions to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics start-ups, financial markets are also betting that AI will become a bigger part of our lives and society.

This past June, the largest overnight delivery carriers, FedEx and UPS, announced that they would apply dimensional weight pricing to all shipments, effective January 2015. It is expected that shipping costs will increase 20 percent to 30 percent and affect over 70 percent of all shipments. What shippers are truly affected by the new pricing model? What can be done to avoid the cost increase?

Honeywell has developed two new products for supporting operations in the warehouse and distribution center.

The shift toward omnichannel distribution has both positive and negative unintended impacts. On the positive side are opportunities to blend and leverage channels; on the downside are organizational and operational gaps. Steven DeFazio, executive vice president at Fortna, offers insights on both.