A 2010 University of Florida study found humans began wearing clothing 170,000 years ago. Someone made those clothes from something, and that was the start of raw materials management. One could liberally argue early cave paintings of fur-bearing animals were the first inventory monitoring systems. RMM has come a long way, but we can do better.

Fraud can happen anywhere in your supply chain. Are you doing enough to stop it?

There's an episode of The Office TV show involving a prank on a hapless colleague in which the victim's desk contents - his stapler, pencil cup, plate, even his wallet-are stashed inside the office vending machine. It does not occur to any of the sitcom's characters to turn these hijinks into a business model, but now someone has.

HighJump Software Inc., a vendor of supply-chain management software, has acquired Atlas Products International.