Challenge: One of the largest natural gas producers in the United States reached the point where it was processing over 10,000 invoices/month for its Piceance Basin field office alone. They were unable to process these invoices within the standard 30-day timeframe for payment. "Between late fees, operational costs and strained vendor relationships, our payment processing operation was costing us money," said the client's Team Leader. "This was a major issue for us because we were assessed late payment penalties, and we were unable to take advantage of valuable early payment discounts. This directly impacted the business's bottom line…"

Challenge: It's hard to manage what you don't know. When our client, a large food ingredient manufacturer sought out our transportation management solution, there was data spread out across multiple facilities and paper freight bills piled high waiting to be processed. Compiling this data into meaningful information was a lengthy and a cumbersome task.

Challenge: Your company spends millions of dollars on shipping every year, and you know there has to be a better way to manage it. McLeod Freight Management Solutions (FMS) not only devises a shipping plan that promises to cut your shipping costs by 10-20% annually, it also ensures that those savings are delivered. Our client achieved savings at that level while managing freight procurement for two Fortune 500 food manufacturers.

Challenge: With limited IT resources, multiple ERP systems, and an unprecedented need for greater business visibility, a mid-sized CPG company turned to Silvon for help.

Challenge: Like all manufacturers, our client's value chain behaves in a non-linear fashion influenced by supply chain capacities, straight and over-time labor rates, input/output price curves, etc., making it difficult to focus on the most profitable activities and products. Recently, demand volatility, input price fluctuations with contractual discount curves, retailer pressures, and multiple decision points along the value chain increased the difficulty of conducting business using traditional costing and supply planning tools.

AIOE was organized last year to bring together operations executives of consumer packaged goods companies in order to develop and share best practices in production operations, says Tom Egan, vice president of industry services at PMMI, which launched the Alliance.

Best Buy's decline reflects a cultural shift that's reshaping the retail world. All big-box stores, and Best Buy in particular, thrived in an era when comparison shopping meant physically going from store to store.

The exponential growth of data from a widening array of sources is making the term "Big Data" a hot topic among corporate executives from businesses of all sizes across nearly every industry.

The Panama Canal's new locks will probably not be ready for their scheduled opening in October 2014, but will be ready for a trial run by a vessel in December, said Jorge Quijano, the engineer in charge of building the canal's third set of locks.

Slow-moving merchandise is one of the many nightmares an online retailer has to consider - and a problem that needs to be addressed. Non-moving inventory stresses both retailers' operations and budgets because it ties up both precious warehouse space and capital that can be used for other products or business expansion.