Four times in the last five years, the Pentagon's inspector general has found that Boeing Co. collected excessive or unjustified payments on U.S. defense contracts. In the latest of four audits since 2008, the watchdog office said the Chicago company charged the Army for new helicopter parts while installing used ones.

Total Quality Management. Quality circles. Quality with a capital "Q." It all seems so...20th Century.

As the saying goes: "One does not get promoted based on cost avoidance." One of the reasons is that costs avoided do not show up on financial statements. On the other hand, costs incurred - including security outlays - are visible, and often become prime targets for the CFO's cost-cutting knife.

Basware has joined with MasterCard to develop an electronic-payment application which speeds up payment to suppliers upon invoice approval, while extending payment terms for buyers.

Widely divergent lifecycles for electronics products are creating increasing demand for obsolete and end-of-life components, which sometimes end up being sourced from the gray market. Let's look in detail why that is happening and how product lifecycles are creating a gap in the electronic components supply chain that is in danger of being filled by counterfeit components.

Many large, global organizations are concerned about the risk of serious physical disruption of their supply chains due to high-impact natural disasters, extreme weather or political turmoil. Over the past two years supplier risk has been receiving more attention from organizations as natural disasters, and their effects on global supply chains, have had wide media exposure.

Changing regulatory environments, new customer demands around the globe, challenges around product security and increasingly complex products are driving healthcare executives to make strategic supply chain investments, according to findings from the sixth annual UPS "Pain in the (Supply) Chain" healthcare survey, conducted by TNS. New technology investments and go-to-market models are top of mind as healthcare executives drive business and logistics transformations to meet evolving industry needs.