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Retail: Page 389

Balancing the Triple Bottom Line of People, Planet and Profits

Analyst Insight: Sustainability is a global business megatrend with cross-functional implications that for-profit corporations cannot afford to ignore any more than IT or quality management. Sustainability means balancing environmental impacts, social welfare and profit-making activities to promote value along the so-called "triple bottom line." Given increasingly conscientious consumers and growing limits to resource availability, success in the era of climate change will be reserved for companies that have sustainable supply chains and operations. - Nada Sanders, Professor and Iacocca Chair, Lehigh University; Director of EcoNautics Sustainability Institute

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There are Good Ways and (Very) Bad Ways to Manage Crises - Like Horse Meat in Food You Serve

Many balk at the idea of biting into Seabiscuit. The cultural taboo around eating horse is one reason why the public has had such a negative reaction to the news that certain European suppliers have been shipping beef contaminated with horse meat.

Dunavant Creates Custom Solution for International Heavy-Weight Shipments

Challenge: A $12 billion retail consumer goods company approached us in need of a cost-effective way to ship heavy-weight products from China. In addition, they wanted a complete review of their replenishment model to improve inventory turns and reduce safety stock.

Consumer Products Is an Industry in Transition

Analyst Insight: The CPG industry's supply chain performance is middle of the pack: more mature than chemical or pharmaceutical companies and less mature than high-tech and electronics manufacturing companies. Several factors are at work to shift the processes to improve performance. Focus is shifting from inside-out to outside-in, from a vertical horizontal siloed orientation to horizontal processes that can better sense and respond, and from a supply chain focused only on product delivery to a value network focused on serving the customer. - Lora Cecere, Founder of Supply Chain Insights

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Are Robots Taking Over the Warehouse?

It seems like a cruel joke. At the same time we hear about the return of manufacturing jobs from Asia to the U.S., we are inundated with stories about the growth of robotics, which threatens to take away those very jobs for good.

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Linking the Physical and Financial Supply Chains

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.

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BizSlate Launches Small Business Supply Chain Assistant

New York-based BizSlate is launching its cloud-based resource planning tool to give small business a hand with their supply chain challenges. Unlike legacy vendors in that sector, including SAP and Netsuite, the technology is specifically designed for department stores, retail chains, small boutiques and the like. Chief executive Marc Kalman says BizSlate is ideal for companies that have "outgrown QuickBooks" but don't have ample resources at their disposal for IT.

Supply Chain Is the Weakest Link in Indian Retail Industry

Analyst Insight: With the government of India recently liberalizing foreign investment into the country's retail sector, many global retailers are eyeing the country as the next expansion opportunity. The experience of early entrants into India's organized retail has shown that supply chain inefficiencies are among the top hurdles to profitability. The unique Indian context requires creative sourcing approaches and significant investment in training and retaining local skilled supply chain talent. - Viktoria Sadlovska, Chief Research Officer, Prameya Research

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How to Extend the Life of Your Distribution Assets

Mike Perkins, vice president of fulfillment and manufacturing with L.L. Bean, explains how the company was able to postpone building a new distribution center, despite an increase in sales.

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UPS and Jabil Will Provide Reverse Logistics Services

United Parcel Service of America (UPS) has formed a partnership with electronic circuit boards manufacturer, Jabil Circuit, to provide reverse logistics services globally. Under the partnership, UPS's logistics and distribution business unit and Jabil's aftermarket services division will provide optimized reverse logistics solutions for return and repair programs to original equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprises.

Ahold To Share Data With CPGs

Ahold USA plans to launch a vendor collaboration initiative next month that will include sending POS, supply chain and merchandising data via a third-party to some number of its CPG suppliers in order to improve product availability and customer satisfaction.

USDA Funds NC State Study to Develop Global Food Supply Chain

The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) in North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management is one of several partners in a five- year, $3.9m grant-funded project to build and evaluate supply chains for local farmers and fishers to supply large-scale markets in North Carolina. The project is led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in NC State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has been awarded the first year's funding of the grant by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

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Photo: iStock/Anastasiia Yanishevska

How a Leading U.S. Floral Distribution Company Reduced Warehouse Labor Costs by 45% with RFID

Recycled Tagging Fasteners: Small Changes Make a Big Impact

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Enhancing High-Value Electronics Shipment Security with Tive's Real-Time Tracking

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