British aerospace giants Airbus and Rolls-Royce are preparing for Britain’s departure from the EU – also known as Brexit. Reuters reports that as much as the big companies prepare, their business may suffer consequences resulting from their smaller supply chain partners.

As plastic products cause ecological problems, packaging companies need to rethink their materials choices and opt for more eco-friendly bioplastics.

A week ago, another round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports took effect. These taxes have been specifically designed not to affect consumer goods. Instead, the 25 percent import taxes on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods will affect American manufacturers either financially or by unraveling their global supply chains.

As people in the United States wind down from celebrating Independence Day — often with beer and meat – people in the United Kingdom may soon face a beer and meat shortage, due to a scarcity of carbon dioxide across the U.K.

Unemployment in the United States is below 4 percent, leading manufacturers to seriously consider automation because of the lack of skilled labor for positions.

The future of business and the overhaul of supply chain management currently is limited by legacy technologies, but soon will be transformed by digital technology.

A recent report by McKinsey & Company details how digital solutions can help procurement specialists achieve some often-overlooked savings for tail spend.

With all the talk in our field about putting the customer first, I was surprised to read an article in which a company claims a different strategy. In the June 1 edition of JOC.com, Stewart Lamont, from Tangier Lobster, says his priority is the health of his product, followed by the health and reliability of his logistics strategy.

While more women are embarking on supply chain careers, there is still a pay disparity between men and women. Recent APICS research, which was highlighted this week in the Wall Street Journal, shows men in supply chain on average earn 16 percent more than women.

Ford F-150s are the United States’ best-selling vehicle and a serious financial boon for the carmaker. According to The Detroit Free Press, F-Series trucks contribute more than $100 million a day to Ford revenue.

Harvard Business Review posits that the advancement that will drive the factories of the future is not automation but, instead, operations enhancements.

Although professionals often excel at their own job responsibilities, many only have a vague idea of what their colleagues’ jobs entail. As supply chains become more intricate and entwined, it’s helpful for supply chain professionals to understand the responsibilities and pressures their business counterparts face every day.

Blockchain has been touted as the cure-all for everything from financial fraud to voting, but this week Wired magazine’s Maryn McKenna suggested that blockchain could help prevent E. coli. How? Consider that two weeks ago, the earliest signs of an outbreak of the disease surfaced in New Jersey.

I recently had the opportunity to write a brief response to The Financial Times about what a supply chain transformation entails. The response accompanied a large feature on the status of seafood conglomerate Thai Union, which faced a crisis in 2015.

British supermarket chain Iceland is making a bold sustainability move. The retailer is becoming the first major UK supermarket chain to stop using palm oil in its store-brand food products. It aims to accomplish this goal by the end of 2018, The Guardian reports.

Since 2012, The Manufacturing Institute has celebrated women in manufacturing with its STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Ahead Awards, which recognize women in manufacturing who exemplify leadership within their companies.

With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, supply chain professionals are expected to embrace many new technologies — from artificial intelligence and robotics to predictive analytics and cloud computing.

U.S. leaders are levying new tariffs on Chinese imports and tightening restrictions on Chinese investments in U.S. technology, The Wall Street Journal reports. The efforts are an attempt to limit intellectual property theft and adjust a trade imbalance with China.

In just a few years, digital assistants have become common place in homes, with adults and kids asking alarm-clock-sized devices about the weather, their favorite songs and much more. This week, IBM announced its own take on the trend with Watson Assistant.

Two Harvard Business Review contributors have pointed out that there is not yet a well-accepted definition of what industries fit into the supply chain economy. Along the same lines, there also is not a formal count of the number of jobs supply chain encompasses or a rating of those jobs.