In taking the helm of General Motors, Mary Barra becomes the first woman to serve as chief executive officer of a major automotive company, a sign that corporate boards and investors increasingly see leaders' gender as a non-issue and gender diversity perhaps even as an asset.
Technology has empowered customers in such a way that they are now in charge of the business relationship - a fact that's left many businesses playing catch-up. Companies and supply chains that fail to realize this risk losing customers if they don't respond to their needs.
As businesses increasingly become more mobile, integrating different devices, applications and data into a single, seamless network is a significant challenge. In this Power Lunch roundtable, conducted at the annual user conference sponsored by Barcoding Inc., three experts discuss the keys to a successful integration project and identify common mistakes to avoid. They are: Martin Jack, chief technology officer at Barcoding Inc.; Kerry Kulp, network systems consultant at Cumulus Consulting Group; and Kelly Harris, director of program management at Barcoding Inc.
The conversation is facilitated by SupplyChainBrain Editor Emeritus Jean Murphy.
Since the end of World War II and the birth of the modern global economy, business leaders have come to accept an iron law: International trade always expands faster than economic growth. Between the late 1940s and 2013, that assumption held true. Trade grew roughly twice as fast as the world economy annually, as fresh markets opened up, governments signed free-trade pacts, new industries and consumers emerged, and technological advances made international trade cheaper and faster. Now this iron law may be crumbling.
Crowley Maritime Corporation's Caribbean logistics unit has recently been granted reclassification of its Puerto Rico warehousing and distribution center to Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) status.