A conversation with Dan Ludwig, senior vice president of DHL and head of the company's new office of Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Management for the Americas. DHL, a leading global express and logistics company and a subsidiary of Deutsche Post World Net, recently created a new humanitarian and emergency management office to formalize procedures and provide oversight for all the company's regional disaster preparedness and response efforts. This includes management of DHL Disaster Response Team Americas, which is part of a worldwide network of disaster response teams developed in partnership with the United Nations to support humanitarian relief efforts in the international community. Dan Ludwig was tapped to head this effort.

Nearly everyone agrees that a synchronized supply chain requires effective collaboration between trading partners, but when it comes to defining what collaboration actually is and how to accomplish it, opinions are all over the map.

With the great number of new products being introduced, shorter product life cycles and more special-events promotions-it is extremely difficult to "predict" today's customer.

A conversation with Gene Long, president of UPS Supply Chain Solutions Consulting Services, Atlanta. Gene Long has spent most of his 32-year career on the shipper side of the supply chain fence, including service as director of worldwide logistics for Dell Computer. At Dell, Long was responsible for physical distribution, remote inventory and delivery activities in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He earlier served as vice president of global logistics for Burlington Air Express, where he created a third-party logistics company serving clients around the world. Since joining UPS in 2001, Long has been deeply involved with the company's strategy to expand its portfolio of supply chain services through targeted acquisitions.

Technology has been slow to come to the yards surrounding distribution centers, but companies increasingly are adopting systems that extend inventory management beyond the dock door.

Increased offshore manufacturing coupled with growing demands for more customized products and rapid delivery require a more flexible order-fulfillment model. Supply-chain strategists and solution providers are responding to this challenge.

A conversation with Jeremy Shapiro, professor of operations research and management emeritus in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

Thousands of hours and millions of dollars are spent each year by retailers and CPG companies to resolve conflicts and discrepancies caused by mis-matched and out-of-date item data. Now, all that is about to change.

For "complexity masters," the world can be a dependable supplier and profitable market. But lackluster business performance is an unpleasant side effect for companies ill prepared for globalization and mounting value-chain complexity.

As corporations turn a strategic eye on sourcing operations, they increasingly realize the need to better manage and enforce their numerous contracts. In may ways, this is old news for transportation and logistics, where contract management tools and processes already are well established, though still underused.