Terra Technology has added to its Demand Sensing product suite with the introduction of a Long-Term Demand Sensing (LDS) application.

People, processes and technology are the three key areas where companies are experiencing "pain points" in their forecasting efforts, says Eric Ball, solutions manager with Avercast LLC. The people side is especially vital, given the trend within many companies of "trying to do more with less." Too often businesses rely on a new piece of technology to improve their forecasting, ignoring the need for humans to run the system. "Coupled with budget cutbacks left and right, developing personnel is a tremendous issue," he says.

The electronic industry has always been characterized by high variability in supply and demand. With recent natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and flooding in the parts of the U.S., the problem has only become more acute. Tackling it requires state-of-the-art systems, strong management commitment, good customer service, well-run business processes, integration among functions and effective inventory-control procedures, says Dave Lentz, director of innovation and solutions marketing with Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas.

Arena Solutions, a vendor of cloud-based product lifecycle-management (PLM) software for managing bills of materials (BOMs), has forged a partnership with Octopart, a search engine for electronic parts.

GE Capital Fleet Services has launched IntelliGauge, a mobile fuel and carbon-dioxide calculator which allows users to compare the fuel costs of their current vehicles against future models.

Epicor Software Corp. has introduced a new version of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) application. The update contains more than 300 new features and enhancements across every suite, including the Epicor ICE Business Architecture.

RedPrairie Corp. has released version 2012.1 of its suite of supply-chain software applications. The update links execution capabilities to the store and commerce sites, giving retailers, manufacturers and distributors greater visibility of product and data.

GT Nexus has entered into a partnership with WNS (Holdings) Ltd., a provider of global business-process outsourcing (BPO) services.

Labor incentive programs can work hand in hand with your supply chain strategy by improving such things as productivity and quality. But, says Tom Stretar, senior project manager, enVista, employees must see the benefits to them if these programs are to succeed.

"Sometimes buzz begets buzz." That's Patrick Bower's explanation for why sales and operations planning (S&OP), hardly a new concept, has become so important to companies today. According to the senior director of corporate planning with Combe Inc., globalization has had a big influence on companies looking for ways to plan demand within increasingly complex supply chains.