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Over the last half-year, Google has quietly acquired seven technology companies in an effort to create a new generation of robots. And the engineer heading the effort is Andy Rubin, the man who built Google’s Android software into the world’s dominant force in smartphones.

General Electric (GE), on the hunt for ways to build more than 85,000 fuel nozzles for its new Leap jet engines, is making a big investment in 3D printing. Usually the nozzles are assembled from 20 different parts. Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing can create the units in one metal piece, through a successive layering of materials.

As shown in the video, a customer places an order on Amazon’s site and selects Prime Air as the delivery method, which promises 30-minute service.

Apple Inc. is putting a record $10.5 billion to work in new technology — from assembly robots to milling machines — that consumers will never see. Apple is spending more on the machines that do the behind-the-scenes work of mass producing iPhones, iPads and other gadgets. That includes equipment to polish the new iPhone 5c’s colorful plastic, laser and milling machines to carve the MacBook’s aluminum body, and testing gear for the iPhone and iPad camera lens.

In 2012, Dr. David Simchi-Levi of MIT came up with a model and approach to answer tough risk management challenges. Using what he calls the Risk Exposure Index (REI), the tool enables companies really for the first time to quantify the risks in their supply chain, especially those stemming from the unknown unknowns, such as natural disasters, factory fires, etc. A number of companies across the globe in several industries have already adopted the REI approach. One of those is auto giant Ford Motor company, and Ford is sharing its new risk management strategy in a major new Videocast Dec. 3rd on our Supply Chain Television Channel.

The global auto industry in recent years has come to recognize risks inherent in its long and diffuse supply chain. Now it’s starting to face an almost 40 percent bottleneck in the ability to make vehicles. “You cannot just wait until something happens to respond,” David Simchi-Levi said. Companies that understand their vulnerabilities in advance return to production more quickly after a disaster. Simchi-Levi’s department at MIT has been working with Ford on supply chain risk management.

Research by the Business Continuity Institute has looked into supply chain business continuity issues. In a survey of over 500 business continuity professionals from 71 countries, 75 percent of respondents reported that they did not have full visibility of their supply chain and that 30 percent did not know where they fit into any of their suppliers’ priorities. Only 12 percent knew where they fit into all of their suppliers’ priorities.

Propelled by a sharp rise in supply-chain misdeeds, the number of companies hit by fraud has risen by 9 percent in the past year, according to a new study.

When supply chain professionals think of mode shift they think of moving from faster and higher cost modes, like truckload, to a totally different mode, like rail. But you can also stay in a mode and achieve the same thing.

The e-commerce giant is quietly setting up shop inside the warehouses of a number of important suppliers as it works to open up the next big frontier for Internet sales: everyday products like toilet paper, diapers and shampoo.

The North American shale boom has brought with it many benefits, including new jobs, cheaper electricity and the potential for energy independence. But as producers tap ever more oil and gas, they are also exposing major shortcomings in the country’s transportation system and grappling with a problem of plenty: how to move all that product to market?

In 2012, the M.I.T. Forum for Supply Chain Innovation and the publication Supply Chain Digest conducted a joint survey of 340 of their members. The survey found that one-third of American companies with manufacturing overseas said they were considering moving some production to the United States, and about 15 percent of the respondents said they had already decided to do so.

“This is a completely different manufacturing paradigm than what we saw 10 years ago,” said David Simchi-Levi, a professor at M.I.T. who conducted the survey.

As Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled new iPhones on September 10th, a complex operation had already kicked into gear behind the scenes to send millions of the handsets to store shelves worldwide. The process starts in China, where pallets of iPhones are moved from factories in unmarked containers accompanied by a security detail. The containers are then loaded onto trucks and shipped via pre-bought airfreight space, including on old Russian military transports. The journey ends in stores where the world’s biggest technology company makes constant adjustments based on demand.

The biggest ships in the world are being built by Daewoo for the Danish shipping line A.P. Møller-Maersk . They’re container vessels that will ply the route between Northern Europe and China called the Triple-E, and Maersk has ordered 20, at a cost of $185 million each. They’re 1,312 feet long, 194 feet wide, and weigh 55,000 tons empty. A cargo vessel of this size was unimaginable a half century ago, when the first container ship sailed from Newark, N.J., to Houston carrying 58 containers. Twelve years later the biggest container ship carried 1,200, and by 1996 the Regina Maersk class had a capacity of more than 6,000 20-foot equivalent units, or TEU. The Triple-E’s capacity is 18,000 TEU. (Most containers today are 40 feet long, so the number carried will be closer to 9,000.)

As Western companies overwhelmingly turn to low-wage countries far away from corporate headquarters to produce cheap apparel, electronics and other goods, factory inspections have become a vital link in the supply chain of overseas production. An extensive examination by The New York Times reveals how the inspection system intended to protect workers and ensure manufacturing quality is riddled with flaws.

Nearly two decades after the Web revolutionized shopping, many big retailers are still struggling to turn the Internet into a big part of their business.
Amazon sells more online than its next 12 biggest competitors combined, including Staples and Wal-Mart, according to the trade publication Internet Retailer.