Frederick Taylor, Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan among others showed how to run big organizations by delivering mass production through managing the supply chain, parsing and manufacturing demand, controlling employees as human resources, and steadily increasing efficiency through economies of scale.

FORBES: Connect

Managing the supply-chain database is no trivial matter either.

ECONOMIST: Tech.view

Actively managing the performance of our supply chain has never been more important.

FORBES: Data, Data Everywhere!

Reflecting the nature of managing this supply chain risk, 42 percent of chemicals companies surveyed say they invest in proactive risk management capabilities compared with 36 percent in the survey average.

FORBES: Risk Analytics: Insights for Chemicals Companies

In addition to managing risk, supply-chain directors understand the increasingly important principle of supply-chain agility to ensure they provide protection against the unexpected.

FORBES: When Disaster Strikes: Avoiding A Hit To Your Supply Chain

Managing and maintaining an optimal harmony among what goes as input to the supply chain, what is made and how much goes as waste is critical to responsible supply chain and to good product stewardship.

FORBES: A responsible supply chain is a delicate balancing act

Dell, with a history of managing a great supply chain and relatively little innovation in management or analysis software, has the longest road to travel to this new model.

FORBES: Who's Got A Dell (Issue)?

Rapt, another start-up, is perhaps the best example to show that optimising a supply chain can be as challenging as managing a financial portfolio.

ECONOMIST: Chain reaction

So far, the majority of companies are just focusing on dealing with the regulations as they come up, according to Mike Kirschner, president and managing partner of supply chain consulting group Design Chain Associates.

FORBES: How International Regulations Are Changing American Supply Chains