Automation appears on its face to be a sound strategic move for a distribution center. But turn the clock back a few years, and vast expensive warehouse automation projects were notorious for proving in practice to be inflexible gridlocks, a bottleneck in the flow of goods heading from factories to customers.

Sustainability can involve a global effort to calculate carbon emissions across the entire supply chain. Or it can mean the changing of a few light bulbs.

Comdata Inc. has launched Release Two of FleetAdvance, a software application for truck fleet management.

LLamasoft Inc., a provider of software for supply-chain design, has made a number of enhancements to its Supply Chain Guru and Transportation Guru applications.

There are big opportunities for companies to save money by optimizing indirect procurement, according to Mark Hillman, global head of market insights and analysis with Procurian. He explains how it can be done.