APICS Operations Management Now

Hewlett-Packard has shifted its strategy from buying most of its semiconductors in bulk from a single supplier to using multiple chips from a variety of suppliers. Leaders say their supply chain strategy provides the company key advantages.

In Europe, manufacturers are expanding their profitability by providing services as well as goods. These services include aftermarket parts, repairs, predictive maintenance, and more.

Shinzo Abe’s plan for Japan includes monetary, fiscal, and reform programs to force mild inflation, and it is seeing some success. Japan's manufacturers may finally have reason to be hopeful.

Companies are using automated systems and big data to gather and analyze factory floor data to ensure quality, lower costs, increase safety, and add value to customers.

Leading businesses today are using natural capital accounting, assigning monetary values to natural resources such as clean water. Then, company leaders consider those figures when making business decisions.

Karen Mills, administrator of the US Small Business Administration, writes that investment in US small business is a result of high worker productivity, rising labor and energy costs, and logistical advantages of closer supplier networks.

Many business leaders already are capitalizing on the power of effective supply chain management. Supply chain excellence is a competitive advantage, and well-run supply chains create value in organizations.

The Gap is working to strengthen its global strategy, focusing on brands instead of channels; global assortment; and speed to market, where having a responsive supply chain is most critical.

Supply chains are difficult to secure; the risk is challenging to identify, hard to quantify, and costly to address. Supply chain risk management is increasingly a critical subject for supply chain and operations management professionals.

The answer to the competitiveness question may be quite simple. If businesses are going to succeed in the global marketplace, they need to make their customers happy.

One organization in India is working to get rural villages access to water, basic sanitation, health care, and education. They aim to prevent migration out of villages and entice workers to build their own local businesses.

Today, some argue that supply chains are becoming an autonomous global force, greater than any nation or economy, and that certain recent high-profile business stories are actually supply chain stories.

There’s a historic shift happening in India, Bangladesh, and other South Asian Nations. Millions of people are rising out of poverty, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports billions more are crossing over into a new global middle class. This information comes from the 2013 Human Development Report, released last week by the UNDP in Mexico City.

The Toyota Motor Corporation is making some big changes, especially across its North and South American affiliate companies. Leaders want operations there to be more agile and more autonomous.

Is the record-breaking economy leaving small businesses behind? Small-business confidence hasn't returned to where it was before the recession, even as large enterprises enjoy pre-recession levels of confidence.

We at APICS have been working to connect opportunities in China, India, and Mexico with workforce development in those markets. Supply chain and operations management professionals contribute to economic growth all over the world.

The job market is tight at all levels across organizations, industries, and geographies. More and more companies are demanding greater credentials for all types of employment.

Recent incidences of beef contamination have illustrated that the food supply chain is complex and difficult to trace. And food fraud is becoming an attractive enterprise to criminals.

Building factories like they were in the 1970s isn’t the key to adding value in 2013. Take a core manufacturing concept—visibility—and apply it throughout the enterprise.

India's current manufacturing policy aims to create more than 100 million jobs and boost manufacturing's profile. The country also is looking for opportunities to woo global investors.