Global supply chains faced their fair share of new and existing challenges in 2007. While improving both cost efficiencies and customer-service levels remained top of mind for supply chain executives, they are now chartered with enabling new business priorities, such as support for growth through more rapid innovation, increased flexibility to respond to demand variations, and sustainability and environmental needs.

With the Presidential Election at the forefront of the news, the term "change" has taken on new shape and meaning.

Our recent post on the compelling argument that Former President Vicente Fox made on near-sourcing from Mexico really begs the question: are you getting what you expected from China sourcing? It seems that a decision to source from China is as easy as recommending SAP for IT (or IBM for just about anything else). However, a recent study by the industry analyst Aberdeen Group reported that the total landed cost of goods – product cost and all related supply chain costs including transportation, duties, and taxes – varied from 2% to 10% for half of the 400 companies surveyed that import from China.

Now that the decision is made and operational, read on to discover ten strategies that can help your company tame those landed cost over-runs.

Back in the 1990s, the governors of the two largest border economies in Mexico and the United States were kicking around ideas to expand NAFTA to create a Super NAFTA. Then, in 2000 each was elected to president of their respective nations and the timing looked great for Vicente Fox and the people of Mexico to expand trade and achieve the next level of economic growth.

I had the opportunity to hear Former President Vicente Fox recount his perspectives on globalization at the recent AMR Executive Supply Chain Conference. A renaissance man, he got his start selling soda pop for the world’s largest BevCo, rising to the top spot in Latin America in the Sixties. This success propelled him to tHe Business School in Boston. Post-graduation, he decided to apply his trade at the family cowboy boot business.

Lucky for Vicente, John Travolta, teen heartthrob of Welcome Back Kotter and Saturday Night Live, applied his coolness to boots in the film Urban Cowboy. The Fox family business exploded and Vicente expanded distribution world-wide, learning from the sole up how to build a global business.