Organisation-wide purchasing is often the responsibility of the procurement team with the business reliant on them to source the right goods and services at the best price. But different departments within an organisation will often have very specific and specialist requirements and there are significant merits in empowering selected personnel to source exactly what they need, when they need it.

Price optimization is the next frontier on the retail battle lines, with Walmart and Amazon waging a fierce battle to best each other on price. It's a fight that Amazon is winning thanks to its pricing strategy, according to the Price Perception Index (PPI) for digital retail.

Is China guilty, as charged by U.S. traders, of keeping its currency artificially weak?

The world of contract manufacturing has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Jeff Murphy, director of supply chain managed services with Celestica, describes how the company has improved forecast accuracy and demand visibility, against this backdrop of industry transformation.

The key attributes for supply chain leadership are patience, diplomacy and financial literacy. And this is a very rare combination of skills.