A radical new blueprint for how Britain's NHS buys everything - from rubber gloves and stitches to new hips, building work, bed pans and temporary staff - has been unveiled by health minister Dan Poulter.
Globalization has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on supply chains. Purchasers can now search further afield for goods and services to achieve better value, quality, price or reliability. But for all their benefits, truly global supply chains are not without issues. The trends for reduced inventory, just-in-time ordering and end-to-end automation mean that many companies are hugely reliant on their IT infrastructure and underlying communication services.
The latest version of Isotrak's vehicle tracking solution enables fleet operators to improve trailer utilization and cut operational costs and fleet size by as much as 10 percent, the manufacturer says. The Active Transport Management System (ATMSi) gives round-the-clock visibility of all the trailers in the fleet, identifying those in use and those underutilized.
Recipharm's solid dose facility located in Fontaine, France, has been approved for supply of manufactured products to Japan's pharmaceuticals market following a recent inspection by the PMDA, the Japanese drug agency.
Electronic invoicing isn't new, writes Nigel Taylor of GXS. It started over 40 years ago with business-to-business (B2B) electronic data interchange (EDI) within private networks. With the advent of the internet in the '90s, e-procurement portals appeared and sparked a frenzy of investment into online industry communities. The e-procurement portals focused on sourcing and purchasing activities, and this narrow focus inevitably led to internet portals dedicated to payables processing.
