The Paris Climate Agreement resulted in a commitment by 195 countries to enact strict policies to address global climate change. Now manufacturers will have to fall into line.

Analyst Insight: Today's strategies for managing suppliers are incomplete. Too much emphasis has been placed on using power to gain leverage over suppliers. But this strategy doesn't work in every situation and care has to be taken to architect the right kind of relationship. Power stymies the development of truly collaborative and strategic relationships. These relationships can produce outcomes well beyond what one firm can do by itself. - Karl B. Manrodt, Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Georgia College & State University

Analyst Insight: Top leadership involvement in governing IT risk strategies and identifying the right practices to manage those risks is a requirement for any organization looking to have effective supply chain security. Today's IT landscape requires an accelerated level of knowledge sharing of IT risk practices and solutions, both with suppliers and within the enterprise. Leaders have to change how information is communicated and shared throughout the organization. - Andrea Stroud, research program manager, APQC

Analyst Insight: The growth of e-commerce, the evolution of consumer expectations, and the globalization of e-commerce have resulted in many changes in the requirements of retail supply chains. These changes demand that retail supply chains handle more volume, quicker, and around the world. Supply chains are at a crossroads to either constrain an organization’s success or to enable the organization’s profitable growth. - Jim Tompkins, CEO, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: We have spent over a decade understanding what drives operational performance in DCs through the DC Measures Study. We've written that a DC's operations should reflect the firm's strategic direction. If the strategy is not communicated or understood, firm performance will be mixed at best. Combining over 2,000 respondents spanning five years of data, we've identified a common theme: the lack of alignment between the operational level and corporate strategy. -- Karl B. Manrodt, Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, & Donnie Williams, Assistant Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Georgia College & State University

Here's a question for U.S. exporters who were grievously harmed by the West Coast longshore labor slowdown in late 2014 and early 2015: Would it make you feel any better to learn that you were the victims of "a street brawl"?

Analyst Insight: Network design, network planning, network analysis, network optimization, or network studies - these terms have been used over the past 25 years to represent the work to determine how to set up logistics networks, how to analyze them for cost reductions, and how to re-plan them when something important changes. - Gene Tyndall, Executive Vice President, Tompkins International

After years of delay, the automation of importer filings, involving multiple government agencies, is upon us. Say hello to the "Single Window."

Trac Intermodal has joined Gary Chilo, founder of Blocking and Tackling LLC, in creation of the Intermodal Data Hub.

A lot of companies are falling short in their efforts to derive full value from the sales and operations planning (S&OP) function. But the main reason for their failure might surprise you.