With a current world population of more than seven billion, and expectations that number will exceed eight billion by 2030, the global healthcare industry is growing exponentially. But to achieve its potential, providers across the industry - from R+D and manufacturing to the caregivers themselves - must go "borderless." This interconnected view of the industry's future was the focus of the FedEx Corp. healthcare industry summit, held in New York City recently.
These clusters are agglomerations of logistics activities in a region or logistics park, and there can be huge cost-saving advantages to locating in them.
For McCormick & Company, the ubiquitous producer of spices and flavorings, 2011 was one tough year. I'm not talking about financials; McCormick's net sales for the year were up 10.8 percent over 2010, to $3.7bn, while net income rose 5 percent, to $374.2m - not a bad performance in a sluggish economy. I'm referring to the anti-trifecta of disasters and disruptions that severely challenged the company's ability to service its customers.
How France's Sofrigam SA came to trust an outside logistics provider, ModusLink, to provide fulfillment and warehousing duties for its highly sensitive line of products for protecting temperature-controlled bio-pharmaceutical shipments.
Why has it taken so long for warehouse-management and warehouse-control systems to move to the cloud? And which of the two is more likely to survive in the years ahead? Kevin Reader, chief marketing officer of Invata Intralogistics, has some answers.
Pricing continues to be the most interesting and watched of the used truck market metrics. In August, pricing was up for all three time period comparisons - month over month, year over year, and year to date/year to date. Volumes also increased month over month, but remained well below pace for other time period comparisons.
You'd expect to see headlines like this - 'Launch of New Apple iPhone Causes Riots - when consumers beat down doors and trample each other, yet these riots were in China, among workers at Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple and other U.S. companies.