Supply-chain professionals have been sounding the warning bell about the coming talent shortfall for several years now. But who's listening? At a time when the economy at large is coping with high unemployment and sluggish job growth, the notion of a sector that can't attract enough qualified bodies is tough to grasp. Still, that's the reality in the supply-chain world today, and it's only going to get worse.

How we love our information systems, our management theories, our best-laid plans. And how often they fail us. It reminds me of what the playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett once said about his work. "Each time one thinks one starts fresh, new," he mused. "Yet each time one reaches the same impasse. There are many ways to begin, many roads to it, but always the same impasse at the end."