Volatility, globalization, higher customer expectations and new-product introductions are the "enemy" of the supply chain, and inventory and capacity are costly ways of combating them, says Puneet Saxena, vice president of industry strategies at JDA Software.

"Sales Carbon Operations Planning" (SCOP) offers a new take on supply-chain management, bringing together traditional sales and operations planning (S&OP) techniques and the need for companies to track and reduce their carbon emissions. "It's my way of making it easy to transfer into sustainability with your existing processes," says Silvia Leahu-Aluas, owner of Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting. The new term covers everything from basic carbon dioxide management to a full understanding of the economic and environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's ERP systems often have much of the needed supply chain management software, they are interoperable, and with them collaboration and visibility problems are minimized, says Mike Tatara, product marketing manager, Epicor Software Corp. In addition, they are highly efficient information repositories.

There are good reasons why a formal process for conflict resolution is necessary in the context of supply chains, says Stewart L. Levine, founder of ResolutionWorks. The very nature of supply chains, with their panoply of internal and external partners, gives rise to conflict. What's needed, he says, "is a conversational process whereby you can teach people how to move through conflict."

More than a third of U.S.-based manufacturing executives at companies with sales greater than $1bn are planning to bring back production to the United States from China or are considering it, according to a new survey by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Eighty percent of tablet app downloads will be for e-commerce, games, digital publishing and social networking by 2016.

Disk storage is a lot like closet space-you can never have enough. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of big data.

Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd. (Hactl) has become the site for the first authorized training center (ATC) to be established by the International Air Transport Association in Hong Kong.