Innovation of the Year: Smart packaging creates right size box for every item shipped from e-commerce centers Winner: Staples & Packsize International; Runner-Up: PepsiCo; Finalists: LMI, Motorola Solutions, Pa. Liquor Control Board, IBM

To serve its demanding government and business customers, the company needed to find a way to resolve any potential service problems in the quickest and most cost-effective manner possible.

More predictions for the future of supply-chain management, courtesy of a panel of industry insiders at the fifth annual seer-fest sponsored by the San Francisco Roundtable of the Council of Supply-Chain Management Professionals:

The wireless telecommunications business is, to put it mildly, competitive.

The TrueCommerce EDI Solutions Group of HighJump Software Inc. is partnering with Unisun Software, a provider of produce-inventory management and accounting software for packers, growers and shippers.

Retail marketers love complexity. The more variations of a product they can sell, the happier they are. How else can they command all that shelf real estate in big-box stores? How else can they promote innovation? And how else can they drive their supply-chain managers crazy?