Challenge: A specialty chemical manufacturer with seasonal market demand was struggling with limited visibility to its global operations. The company needed to integrate many different ERP systems and add advanced planning tools to improve planning, forecasting and scheduling capabilities and increase visibility to complex demand patterns.

Challenge: Our customer was struggling with unstable demand and lack of visibility across its five manufacturing plants in a mixed MTS/MTO environment. The firm needed to improve planning processes and get everyone collaborating on one set of numbers.

The worst U.S. drought in more than half a century has rallied critics of the federal renewable fuel standard, which will reserve about 40 percent of the nation's corn crop for ethanol production this year.

U.S. officials deployed new financial weapons to try to end the bloodshed in Central Africa and the exploitation of natural resources worldwide, raising the ire of corporations that said the rules could cost them billions of dollars.

A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Such factories are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.

Ian Darley, an inventory specialist in the mining industry, tells how he helped to pioneer a new method for storing materials on site - and eliminating a substantial amount of unnecessary packaging.

FirstCarbon Solutions, a provider of software and consulting services to enhance the environmental sustainability of business, has expanded its partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). FirstCarbon will score companies' submissions on their greenhouse gas emissions and carbon-management strategies to CDP Supply Chain. The latter works with global companies to measure and understand the impact of climate change across supply chains. An independent, non-profit organization, CDP helps companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share information on environmental risk and opportunity.