SupplyChainNetwork.com

RILA Urges Congressional Action to Avert National Railroad Shutdown: Work stoppage could disrupt retail supply chains well into 2012. The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) is calling on Congress to step in to avert a work stoppage that would disrupt retail supply chains during the holiday shopping season and well into 2012. A breakdown in [...]

Checkpoint Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CKP), a leading global supplier of shrink management, merchandise visibility and apparel labeling solutions for the retail industry, today announced here at NRF Loss Prevention Conference & Expo its RFID Overhead EAS Solution, delivering benefits both for loss prevention and inventory visibility at the point-of-exit. This solution includes overhead RFID hardware with [...]

IBM today (NYSE: IBM), announced that Danone, a leading global dairy producer, is working with IBM to provide a secure trading network for that helps expedite and automate business transactions with its customers, business partners and suppliers. IBM is replacing Danone’s existing network to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of its business-to-business (B2B) commercial interactions [...]

Toyota said it expects to halt production at some of its North American factories due to shortages of parts from Japan following the devastating earthquake. The automaker said it was unclear which facilities would be affected or how long the suspension might last. The impact should be limited because the majority of parts used by [...]

From Bangkok Post: “Year-end roundups are all the rage this week, so we thought it apt to do the same for supply chain management. SCM has received more mainstream attention this year than ever before. Not that it has been a cover story in the media, but within both public and private sector organisations the [...]

Between new global serialization mandates, patent cliffs and major company consolidation the pharmaceutical manufacturing space is in the midst of a major transition. Some would say this was bound to happen, as our ‘global (supply chain) village’ continues to become more of a close-knit community. Logistics management is no longer regionally based, but handled on [...]

A 2009 report from Health and Human Services found that 59 percent of the North American food facilities surveyed did not meet the FDA’s requirements to maintain records about their sources, recipients and transporters. On the heels of the largest recall of eggs in FDA history this month and pending legislation in the Senate, food [...]

The Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA) announces its eighth annual Military Logistics Summit scheduled for September 13-16, 2010 in Vienna, VA. IDGA’s Military Logistics Summit 2010 will present updated DoD mission priorities and cutting edge information to support major deployment, re-deployment, and distribution operations. The event will bring together thought-leaders and decision-makers in [...]

A paradigm shift is required for the acquisition and product support of COTS configured weapon systems. Over the last several years there has been a marked increase in the use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components in configuring new weapon systems. This initiative has been driven by Commanders in-theater requiring the rapid fielding of new weapon systems [...]

Last week’s strike at the Omron auto parts plant in Guangzhou was the latest in a series of labor disputes to rock China’s industrial sector over the past two months. It’s an amazing change we’re seeing, as the western world’s favorite source of cheap manufacturing labor begins to transform itself into something quite different: a [...]

Four Soft Limited, India (NSE: “FOURSOFT”, BSE 532521), a global leader offering software solutions for transportation and logistics, today announced that it is bringing top players of the logistics industry on a single platform to form a strategic initiative – FFIFA(Freight Forwarding Industry & Four Soft Alliance). The objective of FFIFA is to provide a [...]

From Industry Week: “Product counterfeiting is a multi-billion-dollar underground economy that poses a serious threat to the legitimate global economy, including commerce and the public’s safety. Many North American manufacturers have exported the production and assembly of their products to different parts of the world to maximize profits. Consequently, they grapple with long, complex supply [...]

From scmr.com: “As their operations grow more global and complex, companies are becoming increasingly worried about disruptions to their supply chains. The big challenge they encounter, says Gary S. Lynch of Marsh Inc., is identifying the potential risks and then effectively managing them. Lynch’s new book, Single Point of Failure, sets forth ten “laws” of [...]

From Industry Week: “More than one-third of North American manufacturers, responding to a MFGWatch survey, say they’ve experienced a significant supply chain disruption in the past three months. When asked if they or their customers had experienced a significant supply chain disruption in the past three months, 38% of both buy-side and supply-side manufactures indicated [...]

From husdal.com: ” I’ve searched and scoured numerous academic journals in order to find literature I can use for this blog. Sometimes my readers help me and suggest articles I am not yet aware of, and sometimes I stumble upon them myself, accidentally. Today I stumbled upon a 2004 working paper from the Copenhagen Business [...]

The DASH7 Alliance, a coalition of organizations promoting a standard for wireless sensor networks, today announced that the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has placed its first order for DASH7 active RFID tracking technologies. The order comes under the DoD’s $429.4 million RFID III procurement contract, and includes products from three vendors – Evigia, [...]

In a perfect world, component buyers would never have a shortage, forecasts would be accurate and authorized channels would always have stock. Sadly, we live in the real world where markets are volatile and manufacturers face recurring shortages. Longer supply chains, more players, more volatile markets, more counterfeit parts. These forces are changing the risk [...]

By Jon Hansen: “I recently posed a question on the importance of Multiple Supply Chain Networks which, within a matter of several hours, elicited 14 responses from around the world. And while the majority of respondents felt that the findings from an ISM, CAPS and AT Kearney 2006 report were not indicative of general market [...]