Doug Bowen, vice president supply chain, and Terry Loftus, medical director, surgical services and clinical resources, discuss the initiatives that Banner Health has undertaken in recent years to cut inventory and logistics costs, without affecting the quality of service to doctors and patients.

A message to procurement managers: Your job is about to be transformed "almost beyond recognition."

Arena PLM, the cloud-based product-lifecycle management application of Arena Solutions, now integrates with Kenandy Cloud ERP, an enterprise resource planning system for midmarket and large global companies built on the Salesforce Platform.

Is it possible that the world is moving too fast for economics experts to keep up?

Fran O'Sullivan, general manager of systems, strategy and operations, argues the importance of having a sound strategy in place, to guide companies in their pursuit of excellence. But it's equally important to measure the success of that effort, she says.