Half of the UK's leading soft drink producers and suppliers,including Coca-Cola and Britvic, have signed onto the Soft Drinks Sustainability Roadmap, a supply chain study that aims to reduce the environment footprint of the industry's products.

A group of 17 American retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Macy's Inc., have signed on to a five-year agreement to help improve safety at garment factories in Bangladesh.

Rising and increasingly volatile costs dominate retailers' top challenges sourcing private label goods, while changes in consumer behavior fueled by mobility and online shopping are driving the strategic importance of private label sourcing, according to Deloitte's study entitled Private Label Sourcing: Strategies to Differentiate and Defend.

After some 19 years of struggling with e-commerce, Walmart is once again learning that managing a merged channel retail strategy is almost never going to beat a well-run pure play e-tailer like Amazon when it comes to online sales.

New York's manufacturing sector receives an 'F' and its logistics gets a 'C'. The situation isn't much better for several nearby states, according to the 2013 Manufacturing and Logistics Report Card, an in-depth analysis from Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research. The report grades all 50 states, ranking several areas of the economy.

True supplier collaboration can drive innovation and value, but success depends upon a foundation of trust that enables partners to effectively deal with such issues as intellectual property rights. Jon Washington, director of product sourcing and global procurement at Diebold, shares his company's approach.