Challenge: A major engine manufacturer was spending too much money on contingent packing costs because their suppliers weren't keeping track of the containers in their inventory loop. When this customer would run out of the supplier's containers, they had to use alternatives like corrugated cardboard in order to ship the product.

Challenge: A large Midwest C-store distributor was tasked with utilizing an outdated system to manage their inventory and short shelf products resulting in low user productivity and less than desirable customer service levels. With over 60% of the inventory investment in short shelf life products, the management of obsolete product was ever increasing as the business grew.

Shopify Inc., a cloud-based, multichannel commerce platform, has partnered with Uber to offer UberRUSH delivery services to Shopify merchants. Merchants enrolled in the program can offer their local customers same-day delivery. The UberRUSH program will begin with a select number of Shopify merchants located in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco and will be rolled out to additional cities over time.

SAP SE has developed the SAP Customer Business Planning application.

Holiday spending will be higher and over a longer period of time in 2015.

The return of some manufacturing capacity from China has fueled economic growth in Mexico and Canada. John Kelly, president of the Canadian Division of Transplace, outlines some of the opportunities and challenges that have resulted from that development.

Challenge: Specializing in optical products, a global manufacturer of glasses across approximately 16 production plants in Asia and a dozen distribution centers in Europe and America faced the need to ensure effective management of its supply chain.

Challenge: Family-owned supplier of operating supplies/equipment for global hospitality set out for new WMS system. Requirements: • Automated dispatching to eliminate inaccuracies/inefficiencies associated with manual intervention; • Open integration with voice-picking, ensuring extensibility across warehouse floor; • Real-time reporting/alerting on order fulfillment, improved replenishment process for better use of resources; • Warehouse task-interleaving, eliminating wasted travel time on lifts and vehicles; • Streamlined receiving process, allowing product allocation at line receipt versus at completion.