Larry Boroff, director of automation systems engineering with FORTE, outlines the fundamentals behind balancing the need for flexibility, efficiency, technology and cost control.

TZA, a vendor of software to track and enhance labor performance across the supply chain, has released a new version of its cloud-based ProTrack Labor Management System.

Managing inventory requires skillfully balancing a variety of complicated and competing objectives. Supply management professionals responsible for inventory have to control inventory holding costs, such as warehousing and financial opportunity costs, while pursuing cost savings that may be obtained with larger purchases. They also simultaneously support ambitious customer service levels for a constantly expanding product portfolio. Of course, supply managers who focus on inventory know these pressures well.

Two executives from industrial realty firm Jones Lang LaSalle discuss issues impacting retailer's distribution site selection decisions, including the growth of multi-channel distribution and rising transportation costs.

Ask any food industry executive to cite his or her greatest concern, and the answer will almost always be the same: product safety. But the list doesn't stop there. Like any other business sector, food manufacturers are grappling with a number of challenges, many of them related to the age of the internet and social media.