In many ways, the fateful episode of the Costa Concordia provides a metaphor for the international shipping industry as a whole. Its image is hardly the best. Huge tankers plying the sea, belching noxious gases into the air from low-grade crude and pumping out invasive species when emptying their ballast-water tanks on shore. Oh, and a catastrophic oil spill every now and then. But that's not the whole story.

Changing regulatory environments, new customer demands around the globe, challenges around product security and increasingly complex products are driving healthcare executives to make strategic supply chain investments, according to findings from the sixth annual UPS "Pain in the (Supply) Chain" healthcare survey, conducted by TNS. New technology investments and go-to-market models are top of mind as healthcare executives drive business and logistics transformations to meet evolving industry needs.

The appalling state of infrastructure in much of Africa is greatly responsible for the high cost of logistics services on much of the continent.

Customer service and fulfillment excellence are highly prioritized strategies for competitive performance. Increasingly, organizations find that for more effective, resilient and reliable supply chain execution in the areas of warehousing, shipping and procurement, more gains are realized by integrating these previously unconnected processes.