Procurement and supply chain have always been strange bedfellows in manufacturing organizations. There's a rather arbitrary dividing line between activities, which, academically speaking, should not exist in the first place, such as balancing inventory/order size with cost and risk.

In the coming years, the global shipping industry is expected to decline by five percent to 10 percent, according to Global Shipping Industry 2013 - Forecast, Trends and Opportunities, a report from Taiyou Research.