The US Department of Defense (DoD) spent approximately $187 Billion on its supply chain in the 2007 fiscal year. However on Monday, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the plan to address on-going problems across the DoD’s supply chain, has fallen short of its goals. In July 2008, The DoD implemented a Logistics Roadmap to guide, measure, and track logistics improvements.

The report highlighted three specific areas where the roadmap has problems; it failed to identify the scope of logistics problems or gaps in logistics capabilities, it lacks outcome-based performance measures to assess and track progress towards goals, and it was not integrated with the DoD’s logistics decision-making processes.

The GAO has made a number of recommendations to the DoD which require the identification of the scope of the logistics problems and capability gaps, to develop, implement and monitor outcome-focused performance measures to assess progress, and to collect detailed information on the costs of the project.

This week the largest material handling and logistics event is taking place in Chicago. ProMat 2009 is sponsored by the trade association Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) and this year the number of attendees is expected to exceed 35,000 over the four days. The event features 100 educational seminars and there are 800 exhibitors to visit.

On Thursday the MHIA will be giving a State of the Industry press conference where the topics will include the major industry initiatives and the overall trends affecting the $156 Billion material handling & logistics industry.

Online registration has closed, but if you in the Chicago area you can attend the event for free by registering at the ProMat 2009 event at McCormick Place.

Today at the National Retail Federation's (NRF) 98th annual convention and expo in New York City, Sterling Commerce announced enhancements to their Sterling Warehouse Management System (WMS). The changes will strengthen the inventory management capabilities for Consignment Inventory, Serial Numbering and Shipment Profiles.

Sterling’s WMS solution is based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and easily integrates with existing systems and material handling equipment. The functionality offered includes cross docking, dynamic slotting for wave planning, advanced slotting capabilities for minimal travel times and RFID capability.

A recent report published by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggests that problems with a company’s supply chain can directly drive the share price lower. The report analyses 600 companies and PwC found that on average the share price of a company drops 9% within one day after a report of a supply chain disruption. They also found that one year after the announcement, two thirds of companies are still trailing in share price performance compared with similar companies who did not had supply chain problems.

Supply chains have become highly dispersed and in some cases very fragile. Many firms source parts and services globally and issues can with foreign vendors can delay production or worse, such as last year’s contaminated milk incident or the lead paint in children’s toys. The PwC report highlights that companies are aware that their extended global supply chains are vulnerable to risks, especially product safety, which was rated by companies as their primary concern.