Swissport International Ltd., a provider of air-cargo handling services, is now offering its track-and-trace capability for cargo customers and their partners via mobile phones.

Oracle Corp. has joined with Infosys, a Diamond-level member of the Oracle Partner network, to create Oracle Project Driven Supply Chain for High Technology Companies.

The National Retail Federation has urged the Federal Trade Commission to move cautiously in establishing regulations for mobile payments, and said any rules that are adopted should parallel those for the underlying form of payment and not be specific to the technology.

Vocollect, a provider of voice technology for mobile workers, has introduced Vocollect VoiceExpress for distribution center and warehouse operators.

JDA Software Group Inc. has released JDA 3D, an application that provides integrated category optimization with three-dimensional virtualization, to enhance collaboration among retailers, distributors and manufacturers.

"Sales Carbon Operations Planning" (SCOP) offers a new take on supply-chain management, bringing together traditional sales and operations planning (S&OP) techniques and the need for companies to track and reduce their carbon emissions. "It's my way of making it easy to transfer into sustainability with your existing processes," says Silvia Leahu-Aluas, owner of Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting. The new term covers everything from basic carbon dioxide management to a full understanding of the economic and environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's ERP systems often have much of the needed supply chain management software, they are interoperable, and with them collaboration and visibility problems are minimized, says Mike Tatara, product marketing manager, Epicor Software Corp. In addition, they are highly efficient information repositories.

There are good reasons why a formal process for conflict resolution is necessary in the context of supply chains, says Stewart L. Levine, founder of ResolutionWorks. The very nature of supply chains, with their panoply of internal and external partners, gives rise to conflict. What's needed, he says, "is a conversational process whereby you can teach people how to move through conflict."

Disk storage is a lot like closet space-you can never have enough. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of big data.