Brand consultant Interbrand and Deloitte recently released its list of the 50 Best Global Green Brands for 2014.

For the first time in the history of Interbrand’s Best Global Green Brands report, there is a new #1 brand: Ford. Toyota, which had held the top spot since the report debuted in 2011, falls to #2 with Honda (#3), Nissan (#4) and Panasonic (#5) rounding out the top five.

How do you explain business situations and supply chain management practices in a way that gets kids excited? You make a game of it. Business on the Move has done just that.

The hope is that the recently launched board game, sponsored by 50 logistics-related companies and institutions, spurs business interest among younger generations and fosters a deeper understanding of how products move from Point A to Point B. While aimed, for now at least, at the UK market, Business on the Move puts real-world logistics, supply chain management, and business decision-making power into the hands of children and young adults aged 9 to 19.

While many supply chain executives are well aware of the risks facing their supply chains and the undesirable consequences, many are still not developing and executing strategies to properly manage identified risks. This finding is according to a new study, "Managing Risk in the Global Supply Chain," sponsored by UPS Capital Corporation, and conducted by the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee.

 

UPS Capital is a business unit of UPS that enables smarter trade through cargo and parcel insurance1, trade finance2 and payment solutions3. One of the studies major findings was, of the 150+ firms surveyed, 90 percent did not formally quantify supply chain risk when outsourcing production, and not one of the surveyed participants used outside expertise to help assess supply chain risks. 

Employee communications is a term that emerged into the mainstream at the beginning of this century. It was born of sophisticated technology and the social media-inspired work style of modern employees. It reaches above and beyond both the interrupt-driven nature of email and the passive nature of slideshow presentations.

Just as people—particularly the Y Generation—have moved from email to social media tools to stay connected personally, the modern work team is shifting to the self-regulating advantages of an employee communications solution.

Sustainable sourcing is turning out as the most important function of supply chain management. And the reason why sustainable sourcing may very well become the single most important aspect of supply chain management, is because of how it grounds itself in future-proofing supply chains.

 

What does it mean to future-proof supply chains? Future-proofing supply chains means protecting your organizations performance in the future against a multitude of potential problems. Whether the future involves loss of access to key production ingredients or logistics providers, future-proofing attempts to mitigate potential dangers.

North Dakota's Bakken oil patch has thrived thanks in large part to the once-niche business of hauling fuel on U.S. rail tracks. New safety rules may now test the oil train model.

Within weeks, the Obama Administration is due to unveil a suite of reforms that will rewrite standards conceived long before the rise of the shale oil renaissance, at a time when crude rarely moved by rail and few Americans had ever seen the mile-long oil trains that now crisscross the nation.

Argos is to start a same-day delivery service in its latest attempt to fight back against Amazon.

The high street chain will initiate a trial later this year that will allow shoppers to order a product online and have it delivered to their home or local store on the same day.

 

Same-day delivery is a growing battleground for retailers as they look to build up their online services.

Is it too early to call current movements in manufacturing a renaissance? 

Maybe not. Forging a revolution in thought, application and process, the expansion policies set into place across the country have spurred a new environment in manufacturing - one which is set to renew what we know of industry, change the way we produce goods and spark innovations of intellect and function across many sectors as well as society as a whole.

 

If there's any other definition necessary for a renaissance, we don't know of one.

Deliv CEO Daphne Carmeli calls the start-up she founded two-and-a-half years ago a disrupter for the retail world and as CEO she is entitled to boast. But Carmeli is not that far off in her description of a service that, with a few tweaks and twists, can be likened to a far more famous disrupter–rideshare services Uber and Lyft.

Deliv is a crowdsourced delivery service used by retailers like Williams-Sonoma and a growing number of malls owned by such companies as General Growth Properties and Simon Property Group. A shopper within a certain radius of the mall can have her purchase delivered to her the same day, whether she bought the goods online or at the store, with the offer for delivery typically made as she pays for the purchase.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just released a draft guidance in June 2014 for Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA) implementation. President Obama signed the DQSA into law in November 2013 as Title II of the Drug Quality and Security Act with broad bipartisan support. The act outlines measures to build an electronic system for the identification and tracing of prescription drugs as they are distributed in the United States. This will allow verification of drug product identifier legitimacy at the package level, detect illegitimate products in the drug supply chain; and improve the drug recall process.

The act outlines key provisions to be implemented within ten years of being signed into effect.

The era of constrained labor supply is just beginning, and the decreasing share of populations that are in the working age cohort will keep human capital a front-burner issue for goods producers for decades, according to a new Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI) report.

In "An Aging, Urbanizing World," senior economist Cliff Waldman wrote that global population growth has been slowing dramatically since the mid-1960s. In the latter half of the 1960s, average growth was 2.07% per year. The rate decelerated over the decades to an estimated 1.15% per year for the 2010-2015 period and is projected to fall below 1% after 2020.

Sustainable sourcing is turning out as the most important function of supply chain management. And the reason why sustainable sourcing may very well become the single most important aspect of supply chain management, is because of how it grounds itself in future-proofing supply chains.

 

What does it mean to future-proof supply chains? Future-proofing supply chains means protecting your organizations performance in the future against a multitude of potential problems. Whether the future involves loss of access to key production ingredients or logistics providers, future-proofing attempts to mitigate potential dangers.

Today’s companies face tremendous challenges to match increasing supply volumes and product ranges to customer demand while keeping overall costs down. The amount of inventory can represent significant costs for businesses, based on the cost of the inventory itself and the cost of shipping, handling and storage.

Inventory optimization can have a staggering impact on supply chain performance, resulting in the reduction of company cash in inventory, which affects the balance sheet and improves cash flow. The right inventory optimization strategy depends as much on the operations, warehousing and distribution strategy of a business as on the type of company and its position within the overall supply chain.

Shifting supply chains to become driven by IT means businesses can standardize their processes and become less likely to run out of stock, says Dominic Regan, EMEA director of supply chain applications at Oracle.

With brands today shipping more goods than ever on an increasingly global scale, the margin for error in managing their supply chains has never been slimmer. Out of stock situations, failure to meet evolving compliance regulations, and shipping delays can have massive financial implications for companies causing serious damage to their reputation with customers. 

As the cost of doing business continues to rise around major metropolitan areas, industrial and distribution operators are looking for ways to dramatically reduce costs, and considerations for relocation are real.

 

For a market to capitalize on the opportunity to attract industrial and distribution operations that are looking to move the market needs to offer differentiators to support it as the option of choice. Markets should offer businesses opportunities to reduce bottom line costs, as well as tools for increasing business efficiencies.