The Indian IT infrastructure market, comprising servers, storage and networking equipment, will total $2.1bn this year, according to Gartner, and surpass $2.9bn in 2017.

Britain's manufacturing companies are driving a trend towards greater use of automated storage and handling systems. That is the view of Steve Richmond, director of Jungheinrich UK, systems and projects division.

Globalization has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on supply chains. Purchasers can now search further afield for goods and services to achieve better value, quality, price or reliability. But for all their benefits, truly global supply chains are not without issues. The trends for reduced inventory, just-in-time ordering and end-to-end automation mean that many companies are hugely reliant on their IT infrastructure and underlying communication services.

EU proposals to return to the days of supply chain management following the abolition of milk quotas in 2015 have been fiercely rejected by the dairy industry.

Many U.S. manufacturers are experiencing talent shortages in part because of an aging baby boomer generation that has begun its exodus from the U.S. workforce. The oldest baby boomers turned 65 on Jan. 1, 2011, and every day thereafter for about the next 19 years, some 10,000 more will reach the traditional retirement age, according to the Pew Research Center.

Last month the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the unmanned systems industry's largest trade organization, released its first economic study detailing just how an expected $82bn in economic impacts resulting from the integration of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the national airspace will be spread across the 50 states.