Cities are deploying big data and analytics tools to enhance transit systems.

Enhanced transportation is a big component of emerging smart cities, and municipalities are turning to big data analytics and other technologies to help to create more efficient ways of getting around town.

This study aims to research and analyse the development of Big Data Analytics and connected services in the farm equipment industry and to assess the value proposition of these connected services that address the expectations of farmers and transform their business practices. The farm equipment industry is witnessing another wave of industrial change through IT industry. The formation of smart connected products is creating new opportunities and new areas of business models.

Data-driven decisioning is the zeitgeist of contemporary marketing practice, but barriers to entry, such as lack of quality data and skillsets, etc, are commonplace. Lloyd Greenfield, client partner at The Programmatic Advisory, talks through his consultancy’s three-step approach to getting started.

This week SCM World launches the annual Future of Supply Chain survey.

To begin with, here are three long-range, contrarian predictions that should matter to supply chain professionals:

An algorithm to optimize school bus routes will save Boston Public Schools as much as $5 million after computer science and logistics experts competed in a 3 month hackathon won by a team from MIT's Operations Research Center. The challenge was similar to the NP-hard Travelling Salesman Problem.

TuSimple hits the road

Chinese startup TuSimple plans to test its fleet of self-driving commercial trucks in Arizona and Shanghai in 2018, leading up to the successful launch of a commercial autonomous trucking service in 2019. This move introduces another competitor in the self-driving race between giants like Tesla, Uber, and Waymo. These companies are all striving to transform the way we send, deliver, and receive commercial goods, and TuSimple’s technology and powerful financial backing make it a serious contender.

A shortage of manpower led Muthu's Curry to introduce tablets and watch-like "wearables" at its three restaurants earlier this year.

Customers can place orders through a tablet, while requests such as for water or the bill will show up as an alert on a device worn on servers' wrists.

Amazon, the $US500 billion ($630 billion) gorilla stalking Australian retail, took a giant step towards establishing a bona fide e-commerce presence in this country last week. It appointed one of its top German executives to run its local operations, and signed a lease on a former Bunnings Warehouse space on the outskirts of Melbourne for its first fulfilment centre.