The U.S. Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has proposed revising hazardous materials regulations when it comes to return shipments of certain hazardous materials by motor vehicle.

Analyst Insight: Complex executive priorities and deeply embedded functional tendencies present challenging organizational dynamics to the chemical supply chain leader. These challenges require a combination of operational effectiveness and leadership vision and influence to establish a hierarchy of layered and synchronized governance processes that connect differentiated execution to segmented demand fulfillment strategies. Features of this integrated capability will include supply and demand visibility with analytics that support agile decision making to manage and mitigate complex constraints. - Paul Lord, Research Director, Gartner

Each disruption in global supply chains seems to bring a new surprise. On March 31 of this year, it was an explosion and fire at a chemical plant in Marl, Germany. The incident at the factory of Evonik Industries resulted in the deaths of two workers and caused damage that will take all summer to repair.