A functioning demand-planning process is a key enabler for supply chain organizations, and getting the process right is fundamental to improving demand-planning effectiveness, according to Gartner analysts.

Healthcare executives around the world are investing in their supply chains as they prepare for continued global growth in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, according to data from the fifth annual UPS "Pain in the (Supply) Chain" healthcare survey.

European climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Australian climate change minister Greg Combet have announced that Australia and Europe will link their emissions trading systems, which will allow businesses to use carbon trading units from either trading scheme for compliance under either system.

Diogo Lobo, head of international logistics with JBS USA, examines the various technology tools that are available for planning, analyzing and managing transportation.

Anthony Perkins wants employees at BNY Mellon to bring their personal smartphones to work and use those instead of company-issued BlackBerries to access business email, applications and data. But not all employees are comfortable with having their personal phones locked down and controlled as tightly as the BlackBerries that Perkins would like to phase out. That's where the notion of containerization comes in.

A guide for the supply chain disclosure of substances used in packaging for the global sale and distribution of electronic products has been issued by the Consumer Electronics Association, DIGITALEUROPE, and the Japanese Green Procurement Survey Standardization Initiative.

Cloud computing is slowly becoming a mainstream technology. However, even before the hype cycle has died down, cloud providers are already starting to see downward price pressures. Every hosting provider under the sun is now repackaging itself as a cloud provider, and basic capacity and services are quickly becoming commodities.

Population trends have vast and wide-ranging impacts, affecting everything from economic patterns to the balance of political power. The ability - and flexibility - to adapt to these shifts, however incremental, will determine a company's degree of success and access to opportunities for many years to come. There is no time like the present to determine what this will likely mean for supply chain management.

The Panama Canal will implement more sound "green building" practices in future construction in order to improve compatibility with the environment, according to the canal's development authority.

In today's business milieu, the likelihood of successfully selecting and implementing corporate software, particularly large and complex solutions such as enterprise resource planning, is very difficult to foretell owing in large part to the nature of those projects.