Challenge: For this agricultural spare parts distributor, each country was served by its own separate supply chain. While strategically placed near customers, it presented challenges with stock availability at each distribution center and in dynamically organizing and fulfilling across multiple distribution centers. In addition, the distributor's own organic growth and strategic acquisitions had left it with fragmented IT infrastructure that was hard to extend.

As the holiday season quickly approaches, it’s a good time to prepare. Unfortunately, with an ever-increasing amount of data, an increasingly complex and varied competitive landscape and demanding customers, the question is often: Where to begin?

Chinese cobalt refiner Yantai Cash Industrial Co. will demand suppliers show that their raw materials aren’t produced with child labor after the London Metal Exchange set a deadline for companies that ship to its warehouses to spell out efforts to combat the problem.

Leading carmakers including Volkswagen and Toyota pledged last week to uphold ethical and socially responsible standards in their purchases of minerals for an expected boom in electric vehicle production.