Robot orders and shipments in North America set new records in the first nine months of 2014, according to Robotic Industries Association, the industry's trade group.
Florida took a beating during the Great Recession. Like many of its Sun Belt peers, the prominent roles of real estate, tourism and financial services led to more than 650,000 jobs lost between 2007 and 2010. Many of the state’s largest metro areas remain thousands of jobs below their peak levels.
Despite many underlying tensions, the Middle East has maintained a positive economic outlook, according to Frost & Sullivan's "International Supply Chain Excellence Programme-Gulf Edition 2014." This is evident from the region's ability to maintain a positive growth rate when most economies globally have struggled to be above the red line.
Private companies, expecting revenue growth to soar far past that of gross domestic product (GDP), are in a hiring mode not seen since pre-recession days.
While various GDP forecasts for the United States call for 2014 growth of less than 3 percent, the average predicted revenue gain for the next 12 months, among 213 private companies surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers between January and April, was 8.5 percent.
A new digital presence has recently been created by AWESOME (Achieving Women’s Excellence in Supply Chain Operations, Management, and Education), the industry-wide supply chain leadership initiative started in early 2013. The launch of www.awesomeleaders.org is timed to coincide with the second Annual AWESOME Symposium on May 15, 2014, in Chicago.
The rise of just-in-time manufacturing has created a revolution across the supply chains of many industries, including electronics components. But there is a negative.
Analyst Insight: India has one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Based on the country's 12th Five-Year Plan, manufacturing in India is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR of 9.5 percent. However, according to a World Bank Survey, India ranks 46th in global trade logistics performance and 13th in GDP growth worldwide. Despite the generally positive economic outlook, estimates indicate that the country's inefficient supply chain results in an approximately $65bn loss per year.
- Neelam Singh, Senior Analyst, and Steve Banker, Service Director, Supply Chain Management, both of ARC Advisory Group
AIOE was organized last year to bring together operations executives of consumer packaged goods companies in order to develop and share best practices in production operations, says Tom Egan, vice president of industry services at PMMI, which launched the Alliance.
