Kieran Brennan, director of business development with Syncreon Technology, discusses the "yo-yo" effect of choosing between complete manufacturing at the factory, and relying on postponement strategies in regional markets.

The rapid growth of e-commerce and, in some cases, declining store sales raise difficult questions for retailers around whether and how to integrate their various distribution channels, says Andrew Breckenridge, executive vice president of Fortna. He outlines key issues influencing these decisions and identifies other retail trends to watch in the coming year.

Seagate Technology has launched a program to eliminate costly and wasteful inventory from its supply chain. Scott Robbleloth, director of supply chain, explains how the company did it.

Dassault Systemes, a provider of product design and lifecycle-management applications, has launched HT body.

The term demand driven has become vogue again, but what does it really mean? And, should it be taken one step further to orchestrate bidirectionally market-to-market in market-driven value networks? Or will companies stumble on the path by mistakenly implementing supply-centric processes and calling them demand-driven initiatives?

Don Olson, senior director of remanufacturing business operations with Alcatel-Lucent, explains how the concept of remanufacturing can reap cost, environmental and customer-service benefits for high-tech companies.