Projects to change distribution networks can be highly complex. To guarantee success, says Mike Dunn, group vice president, Fortna, participants must fully understand the need for change, get total commitment from all departments in a company, and work with a knowledgeable partner.

Bring-your-own-device, or BYOD, is a movement blurring the line between work and personal life. After all, BYOD is all about employees using personal smartphones and tablets for business purposes.

Discrete manufacturing companies operating with highly complex supply chains in today's volatile business world need collaborative planning and the ability to quickly respond to variances in those plans. They often want to model 'what-if' scenarios to better prepare them for those inevitable hiccups - or new business. Kinaxis designed its RapidResponse solution to help companies with demand and supply balancing, optimized forecasting, and improved supply chain performance. Recently it debuted an enhanced version called RapidResponse Control Tower.

In 2012, three decades of supply chain management have passed. It is time to learn from history and look forward. I feel that organizations need to train for supply chain 2020.

The unloading dock is all important to boosting efficiency and productivity throughout one's warehouse and distribution facility, says Ryan Howard, vice president of business development for Inbound Technologies. Labor-management technology uses the best of team and individual incentive methodologies to increase productivity, maintain quality standards and keep workers safe.

Volatility, globalization, higher customer expectations and new-product introductions are the "enemy" of the supply chain, and inventory and capacity are costly ways of combating them, says Puneet Saxena, vice president of industry strategies at JDA Software.

"Sales Carbon Operations Planning" (SCOP) offers a new take on supply-chain management, bringing together traditional sales and operations planning (S&OP) techniques and the need for companies to track and reduce their carbon emissions. "It's my way of making it easy to transfer into sustainability with your existing processes," says Silvia Leahu-Aluas, owner of Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting. The new term covers everything from basic carbon dioxide management to a full understanding of the economic and environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's ERP systems often have much of the needed supply chain management software, they are interoperable, and with them collaboration and visibility problems are minimized, says Mike Tatara, product marketing manager, Epicor Software Corp. In addition, they are highly efficient information repositories.