Briggs Healthcare develops and markets products that are designed to improve clinical outcomes and reduce operating costs for more than 50,000 customers in the senior care, home care, acute care, physician and retail markets. "Having the right product at the right place and time and at the lowest cost is very important to us," says Brad Mueller, vice president of supply chain solutions.

CaroTrans, a non-vessel operating common carrier and ocean-freight consolidator, has opened a new office in Seattle, Wash.

Amware Logistics LLC has acquired the assets of ParcelPort LLC, a provider of high-volume product and literature fulfillment services. The latter will be integrated into Amware under the name Amware Fulfillment Services.

Challenge: A global pharmaceutical company ships its products globally by a combination of air and ocean freight. To improve supply chain operations and reduce costs, This company has undertaken a multi-year strategy to transition more product from air freight to ocean carriage. The company's supply chain team had been successful in the past at transferring some of its air freight transportation to ocean freight, but had yet to undertake a large scale transformation because of the large amount of data collection and analysis required to fully understand the impact. Solution: The company turned to CombineNet ASAP to support their sourcing strategy.

The decision by the U.S. and the European Union to recognize each other's trusted shippers is expected to save those companies money through speedier customs authorization.