The recall of a single food ingredient can have massive implications for manufacturers and retailers, ranging over multiple supply chains.

One of the long touted benefits of outsourcing was relief from the minutia involved in manufacturing, billing, service and more. As outsourcing took off, few worried about the loss of visibility into those functions because they weren't considered core competencies anyway. The prevailing logic was companies should focus on processes that made them unique and everything else should be off loaded to companies that excelled in each domain. In the supply chain, that meant long chains of components from various companies feeding into more complex components that were shipped to the top of the chain and assembled into the finished product.

Michael Landberg, strategic global sourcing manager at Boston Scientific, describes how a major player in life-sciences approaches the critical issue of risk management.

Louis Ferretti, project executive for global procurement with IBM, traces the history of the company's risk-management initiative, to its current use of sophisticated technology and business processes.

In the world of e-commerce, the packaging is more than just a box. It's meant to "inspire and inform" consumers.

"Greening" your company, via any number of means, obviously brings multiple benefits to the physical environment. But while going green may be the responsible thing to do, many companies shy away from these sustainability measures. The reason is their (common) misconception that the costs will outweigh any benefit, that there is no bottom-line value in environmentally responsible business practices. In fact, this belief may be false, because setting a green path can often improve your bottom line.

It wasn't exactly a cast of thousands. But when The Volvo Group set out to slash energy usage at its North American manufacturing plants, it called on a wealth of partners from both the private and public sectors for help.