Years ago, supply management professionals turned to low-cost countries to manufacture products, establish services operations and source materials in an effort to improve the bottom line for their companies. They found that inexpensive labor in India, China and emerging Asian countries made this new low-cost-country strategy successful "” despite requiring the management of lengthy, complex supply chains. Then the world began to change.

Hennes & Mauritz, selling under the brand H&M, is the world's second-largest apparel company and the biggest buyer of clothes made in Bangladesh. That has put the Swedish retailer in an uncomfortable position after the death of a prominent labor activist a year ago and a garment factory fire that killed more than 100 workers in November.

Companies say they are in dire need of competent supply and demand planners, but the requirements of that position today are so varied that you wonder whether a single person exists who can do the job. It calls for strong math and statistical skills, obviously, but a good planner must also be able to communicate well across the multiple "silos" of an organization. The right candidate will have a deep understanding of the requirements of manufacturing, logistics, marketing, sales and finance. Then there's the necessity of reaching outside company walls to suppliers and customers, to ensure that all parties are in agreement about what the demand forecast should be. Who are these freakishly talented individuals? And where can they be found?

The EU has recently announced the official launch of negotiations for a free trade agreement with Japan. The agreement would cover goods, services and investment, and would eliminate tariff and non-tariff barriers, and cover other trade-related issues, such as sustainable development, regulatory issues, competition and public procurement.

Take a close look at any supply chain - even a single entity within it - and you're likely to uncover a hodgepodge of disciplines, each with its own method for forecasting demand, and each convinced of its superiority over everyone else's. So it only makes sense that companies would dream of coming up with a single forecast upon which all departments could agree.