When Mexico set up the first maquiladoras half a century ago, they were sweatshops that simply bolted or stitched together imported parts, then exported the assembled product north across the border to the United States. America got cheap goods; Mexico got jobs and export revenues. Now, with competition growing from other low-cost locations, and with the government cutting some of their tax breaks, the maquiladoras are having to step up their efforts to become innovative.

Carrier Transicold is now offering a Quest II power-saving mode for its container-refrigeration units.

Grupo Pão-de-Açúcar (GPA) has found an RFID solution to a problem that previously affected both logistics and accounting for its Pão-de-Açúcar and Extra supermarket chains. The distribution of fish, as well as other products in its cold chain, presents significant challenges for the retailer. After all, fish do not have identical weights, and businesses work with average values per unit, resulting in differences between what theoretically was delivered to a store, what was really sold and the expected revenue generated by marketing.

The TrueCommerce EDI Solutions Group of HighJump Software Inc. is partnering with Unisun Software, a provider of produce-inventory management and accounting software for packers, growers and shippers.

The Food and Drug Administration proposed rules on Friday that would govern the production of pet food and farm animal feed for the first time. The regulation would help prevent food-borne illness in both animals and people, officials at the agency said, as people can become sick from handling contaminated animal food and from touching pets that have eaten it.

Retail marketers love complexity. The more variations of a product they can sell, the happier they are. How else can they command all that shelf real estate in big-box stores? How else can they promote innovation? And how else can they drive their supply-chain managers crazy?