Challenge: Trading partners need to trust that inventory will arrive when scheduled — particularly during item promotions. Historically, location and arrival time was obtained via driver phone calls. But these projected arrival times didn’t consider traffic and weather conditions, and they were often too optimistic.

Challenge: In late summer 2017, a large pharmaceutical company found its supply chain threatened by three hurricanes and an earthquake. As a manufacturer of medicines for neurological diseases, the company was under governmental and commercial pressure to avoid disruption from four significant events occurring in quick succession.

Challenge: A company's engineering and sourcing departments were siloed and lacking access to historical information and accurate market data (pricing, availability and risk). The engineering department partially designs based on performance, but the bills of materials (BOMs) sent to the sourcing department were not procurable. The company needed access to the right data to increase contract negotiating power and reduce product launch risks due to inventory and manufacturing issues.

Challenge: Security was a priority for a leading logistics provider designing a large, new facility. The team had outlined a comprehensive physical security solution including IP video with integrated access control along with intrusion detection — all managed via a single video management solution (VMS) interface.

Challenge: This Fortune 500 company was paying premium prices for replacement part transportation and labor — and suffered from late returns. Manual, siloed methods for managing dispatching made supply chain processes inefficient and error-prone.

Challenge: A large telecommunications OEM required revisions to upgrade a power supply (PS) with early life failures in the field. Units were available in the U.S. and EU. There was no way to know systematically what version of the PS was in the units in question — the only information was a sticker on the PS itself. The challenges: contain cost and reduce turnaround time for repair.

Challenge: A large food manufacturer was using an arduous manual process to manage its freight. The company knew something had to change to eliminate extensive paper chasing, faxing, repetitive work and wasted time. But with the high volume of inbound and outbound freight to manage, a time-consuming implementation of a TMS wasn't feasible.

Challenge: The operations vice president of an oil and pipeline construction company recently admitted there was a time when he wondered if his company’s cargo insurance policy was worth it. The company sources goods from around the world, moves cargo by multiple modes and runs a supply chain through some of the world’s most high-risk countries. Thanks to meticulous packing and some good luck, they'd had very few supply chain incidents over 11 years. Until that summer, a few years back. That June, a truckload of welding equipment heading to Moscow caught fire. The $809,000 shipment was a total loss. One month later, a cargo ship carrying two of the company's containers, worth $150,000, caught fire. Those containers were also total losses.

Challenge: A major retailer was experiencing rapid growth combined with increased customer demands.

Challenge: For this agricultural spare parts distributor, each country was served by its own separate supply chain. While strategically placed near customers, it presented challenges with stock availability at each distribution center and in dynamically organizing and fulfilling across multiple distribution centers. In addition, the distributor's own organic growth and strategic acquisitions had left it with fragmented IT infrastructure that was hard to extend.