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.

Dick Boer, the chief executive officer of Ahold, which has 3,000 stores, mostly supermarkets, across Europe and the United States, says the internet has vastly changed retail and the grocery business.

Ensuring product quality is of utmost importance to the pharmaceutical industry, and appropriate controls and oversight are required for both the drug-manufacturing process and the supply chain for pharmaceutical ingredients.

If the time is right for U.S. manufacturers of all sizes to consider modernizing their operations, it is important to first look at modernizing their supply chain and logistics operations in order to optimize potential investments. Manufacturers must think holistically about their business before making these decisions, and this includes looking at their supply chain and distribution models and the impacts of these investments on their operations.