Challenge: Difficulty to get accurate and timely location updates on brokered loads. Traditional in-cab solutions are too costly to install and too difficult to deploy to all outside carriers.

Challenge: This high tech company was acquired and entered a period of rapid growth through a series of additional acquisitions. Behind the scenes, this company's supply chain had to keep pace with this growth - a tall order in a time of change.

After surveying 246 National Association of Electrical Distributors companies (102 distributors and 144 manufacturers) for the recent Reimagining Distributor and Manufacturer Relationships study, the message came through loud and clear: Both distributors and manufacturers need to put more time and effort into strengthening their supply chain relationships.

Enterprise resource planning software is a must-have for manufacturers today. The business management software system, usually consisting of a number of integrated applications, is ubiquitous across the manufacturing arena and many other business verticals. Until fairly recently this software was almost always held on-premise, using servers on-site. But the growth of the cloud and cloud-hosted software solutions in general has had its effect on ERP, and most large vendors (and many smaller ones too) now offer ERP solutions in a variety of deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid (a combination of both).

Desalination is typically an energy-intensive - and thus expensive - way to produce freshwater, which is one of the reasons it has been slow to take off as a widespread solution to water shortages.