Despite tight budgets preventing retail and consumer (R+C) executives from updating security programs and causing them to fall behind, many remain confident in their business practices, according to findings from PwC's new report, "R+C Insights: Changing the Game." The report surveyed more than 1,100 senior R+C industry executives and found that regardless of this lag in technological advances, adversaries are becoming ever more sophisticated, breaching the defenses of business ecosystems and leaving reputational, financial and competitive damage in their wake.

System improvement is much more than problem solving. It is dual-staged, having two dependent parts that must be handled with the same enthusiasm to ensure success. The first segment is concerned with problem identification and solution finding, while the second segment deals with realizing a corrective action.

It is not surprising that Americans regard their country as an innovation goliath. The world's brightest scientists compete to study at its universities, its feistiest entrepreneurs dream of moving to Silicon Valley and its savviest consumers buy its iPads and software programs. Yet America's innovation advantage is fading rapidly; indeed, in a growing number of areas it has already turned into an innovation deficit.

BT9, a cold-chain management solutions provider, has introduced Xsense, a system designed to ensure all stakeholders in the cold supply chain have full transparency and control over their perishables, anywhere in the world, at any given time.

Corporations that have pushed hard this last year to improve their performance in sustainability may now face a new challenge - a growing skepticism among professional investors, supply chain officials and recent higher education graduates. Such are the results of the 2012 Sustainability Leadership Report, now in its second year, which analyzes real vs. perceived sustainability performance for 100 leading global brands that collectively represent 16 percent of the world's economic output.

Larry Curry, principal with Oliver Wight Americas, offers a definition of Integrated Planning and Control, along with detailing its benefits and discussing how companies can begin to embrace this vital concept.

C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. has formed a new division to offer logistics services to chemical manufacturers and distributors. Dubbed ChemSolutions, the unit can provide chemical bulk shipping, safety and sustainability, freight forwarding, customs brokerage, vendor and supplier compliance, global trade management and multimodal transportation.

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in September following three consecutive months of slight contraction, and the overall economy grew for the 40th consecutive month, according to the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business.