Manufacturing is expected to yield approximately 700,000 new jobs in 2015, according to a report from APICS Supply Chain Council, which urges the industry to recruit women for those positions.

The global business community should be aware that the impact on supply chain operations worldwide - from the two massive explosions that occurred Aug. 12 at the Ruihai International Logistics warehouse in Tianjin, China - will be far worse than suggested by news analysts and Chinese officials, says Resilinc CEO Bindiya Vakil.

Multi-tiered manufacturing supply chains can end up in some unexpected places - including prisons.

At 29 years of age, Katy Conrad, site lead at Shell's Geismar Chemical Plant, is a terrific ambassador for her profession. She loves everything about supply management - working with smart engineering and business professionals, solving tough problems, and making a bottom-line impact. At Shell, she has delivered significant savings, built a regional B2B sourcing strategy, and held an overseas assignment.

The global market for lithium-ion batteries for vehicles is expected to grow from $7.8bn in 2015 to $30.6bn in 2024, according to a report from Navigant Research.

In June this year a robot crushed a man to death in a Volkswagen factory in Germany. The 22-year-old maintenance worker became trapped between a large robotic arm and a metal plate, in an area usually off-bounds to humans.

The Reshoring Initiative recently announced a program in partnership with Walmart to help companies manufacture more consumer products in the United States.

It's time to stop thinking of your supply chain as an endless stream of entities, all nicely linked together; it is much more complex than that.