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For more than 80 years, Seco Tools has delivered a diverse portfolio of tools and services around the world. Best known for milling cutters for the general machining industry, the pressure the company faces to maintain high service levels continually grows. To complicate matters, they must be able to provide the right consumable product at the right time to customers on all four corners of the globe.

If recent news provides any indication, reports of clean tech’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In case you missed it, 60 Minutes recently aired a provocative story on “the cleantech crash." While it sparked a lot of negative reactions from those in the clean energy and sustainability world, it also seemed to light a fuse.

For the first time in their 18-year history, the WTO member countries agreed on a multilateral pact. They pushed past the differing needs of developed and developing nations, industrialized vs. agricultural issues, and cut through the politics. They agreed that all members should modernize and develop a more professional process for inbound products.

If you are attending NRF this year, here are some recommended sessions to help you orchestrate a consistent, multi-dimensional brand experience in an era of synchronous shopping.

Truckload fuel surcharges, where to find the biggest transportation savings, identifying opportunities with your inbound transportation, get ready for a customs audit, how will HOS impact you, U.S. Government shutdown, transportation savings, appreciation for truck drivers, and much more...

Many new technologies seem to arrive out of nowhere – and then, suddenly, everyone is talking about them. That’s the case with the Internet of Things (IoT).

The last few years have brought significant changes to the retail landscape, and 2014 will be no exception. While a few brands are delivering on their omnichannel strategies, many are still struggling to meet expectations. The latest retail survey from GT Nexus sheds some light into what today’s consumers expect – and what they’re actually getting.

Consider what the world, and your life, would be like if there were no truck drivers. How would products get from the manufacturers to your door? What would happen to the world’s economy?

I recently attended and co-presented with one of our retail clients to an audience of retailers and distributors at the Vendor Compliance Federation’s (VCF’s) Fall Conference. The amount of time, energy and money companies spend on reporting, capturing and problem-solving around non-compliance is astounding.

The recent downtime experienced by Amazon E3 and Microsoft BPOS has created quite a buzz about the stability of cloud computing. Has your organization proactively made provisions and does it have cloud security best practices in place to protect your vital business data and processes in the event of a natural disaster?

Today, and into the foreseeable future, retailers must move past multi-channel retailing to omni-channel retailing. While the two are similar, omni-channel focuses on creating a homogeneous customer experience across all channels. The customer experience is brand focused, versus channel focused. Brick-and-mortar stores become part of the retailer’s overall supply chain and should be considered an inventory and fulfillment source to meet the demands of their customers.

Many people attribute the reshoring trend to the inflating manufacturing and logistics costs in low cost regions such as Asia. As the cost advantage of offshoring diminishes, will firms eventually all move back to the US? Not necessarily.

In health services, the first duty of care is to the patient. People need to be treated as individuals, and their needs must be addressed in relation to their respective and possibly unique conditions.

Despite Customs remaining largely staffed during the government shutdown, many companies are seeing their import and export operations screeching to a halt as they hit trade roadblocks from other furloughed agencies.

Manufacturing Day would not be complete if it did not offer opportunities to hire our heroes—the men and women who have served in the U.S. military. Veterans play an important role in closing the skills gap. They have skills that make them uniquely suited to careers in manufacturing.

Intermodal can be a key ingredient to any transportation strategy to move an organization toward a multimodal strategy for scalability, flexibility, mitigation of risk and business continuity.

All eyes are on Congress regarding funding to keep the U.S. government open. If the government does shutdown, between 800,000 and 2.1 million employees across the federal government will not be at work. This will include some who work to keep our freight moving safely across the country and the world.

The roadmap in addition to our statement of production also re-affirms our commitment to continue to invest in the product for at least the next five years.

Okta Secures $27 Million to Accelerate International Expansion - Sequoia Capital Leads Series D Round; Okta Appoints Philip Turner As New GM For European Operations.

Is the inbound direct materials supply chain getting the attention it deserves? How can these crippling parts shortages occur? Why is there not greater visibility into this segment of the supply chain?