There's a lot of hype in supply chain. If you look at the history of supply chain, there is a track record of hype.

Online shoppers want retailers to make it easier to purchase their goods and services. Consumers also want websites and stores to work better together. For now, they also prefer to evaluate and purchase products from their desktops rather than their mobile devices, and when it comes to shipping and returns "free" is a driving factor to complete the sale. These and other findings appear in the third annual UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study, conducted earlier this year by comScore.

Sedex Global, a specialist in aiding companies in the development of responsible and ethical business practices within their supply chains, has partnered with the World Bank Institute to develop the Open Supply Chain Platform.

A £100m fund to help companies strengthen their domestic supply chains and bring manufacturing back to the UK has opened for bids.

Supply chains in engineering and manufacturing lag ten years behind other industries. So says research by Lisa Harrington of lharrington group, who argues that engineering and manufacturing businesses must re-evaluate their approach to supply chain management and respond to their industry's driving trends to remain competitive in today's volatile business environment.