Omnichannel retailers are gearing up for a holiday season that will likely find shoppers even more inclined to buy on line -- but not necessarily take delivery at home, says Gregg Aamoth, chief executive officer of POPcodes.

Challenge: Our company faced a quality issue originating during our sub-assembly of headliners for a major customer, a Fortune 100 automotive OEM. Strands of the glue used to affix wiring harnesses and other parts to headliners' C-surfaces were ending up on their A-surfaces as well and were not detected in the QA process. The problem was discovered after finished headliners were installed on vehicles. We needed to make detection easier and meet production cycle times and quality standards.

The CMA CGM Group has launched the Wazzan Service, linking Morocco with Northwest Africa and boosting its intra-Africa coverage.

Despite a concerted push to expand their overseas presence in recent decades, few companies are ready to build and run truly global organizations and operations, according to a survey of executives conducted jointly by The Boston Consulting Group and IMD business school.

Challenge: Even though growth was on the fast track for one of the largest domestic foodservice providers, they were still hampered by supply chain visibility and accuracy challenges. Without visibility, they had no way of knowing how truckload orders were impacting their entire supply chain, leading to increased costs. The company was also facing substantial increases in commodity prices, fuel and the minimum wage - critical elements in the food and restaurant industries. Complicating those challenges were ongoing limited-time promotions, which require immediate responses to spikes in demand.

For the past seven years, Carlo K. Nizam has been the head of Airbus Group's Value Chain Visibility and RFID program. He has led the effort to use radio frequency identification, as well as what the company refers to as "Intranet of Things" technologies, to track aircraft parts, logistics containers, tools, jigs, subassemblies and other critical assets.

Retailers and their suppliers are under more pressure than ever before to deliver more goods to more destinations faster. To stay competitive, "retailers need to know where things are at all times so they can redirect shipments, rebalance inventories and respond to new demands on the fly," says Rich Becks, general manager, Industry Value Chains, E2open, which delivers cloud-based supply chain collaboration solutions.