SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Saudi Arabia has announced a plan to spin off about 5 percent of its state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco — which, at $2 trillion (some estimates are even higher), may be the most valuable company on Earth.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Crashes of large trucks are on the rise in the United States.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Amazon has announced it is leasing 20 Boeing 767 planes in order to move its own goods, a move that could significantly impact FedEx and UPS, which it now leans on to deliver many of its packages. Some analysts are even wondering if Jeff Bezos's company might be positioning itself to become a competitor to FedEx and UPS.

Meeting current customer demands won’t be enough in 2025, keynote speaker Calvin G. Butler Jr. said on Nov. 13, 2015, at the fourth annual Smith School Business Summit in Baltimore. “Meeting the current demands of customers is only part of it,” said Butler, CEO of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. “You need to think about where your customers are going, and you need to meet them there.”

Supply chain experts at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business have spurred the implementation of a new system that will accelerate trade and save U.S. businesses money and time. Soon, the current paper-based system required by the U.S. government to import or export cargo will give way to the new “single window,” electronic data collection process, dubbed the International Trade Data System. It becomes mandatory in February 2016.

Brazilian immigrant Viviane Hembrock ’13 grew up surrounded by shipping. Her hometown of Santos, São Paulo, processes more than 3.5 million cargo containers annually, making it the busiest port in Latin America.

Twenty-four supply chain students from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business traveled to the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) EXPO on Sept. 20-22, 2015, in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. The students are in the school’s Supply Chain Management Fellows program, which is fully funded by IANA, and the trip was part of the “Seminar in Supply Chain Management: An Executive Perspective” (BMGT 471) course.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Port operators in Savannah, Ga. are racing to upgrade their facilities for the rising generation of big ships, which will have a new lane from Asia when the Panama Canal completes a 10-year widening project in 2016. Rivals are eyeing the same big ships in Charleston, S.C. And in Boston, Houston, Miami and many other ports along the Gulf and East Coasts — like the reality television series where many bachelors vie for the attention of the same bachelorette.

Brazilian immigrant Viviane Hembrock ’13 grew up surrounded by the shipping industry. Her hometown of Santos, São Paulo, processes more than 3.5 million cargo containers annually, making it the busiest port in Latin America. “My city was all about logistics,” Hembrock says. So a supply chain career seemed natural when she came to Baltimore as an au pair and found an opportunity to study at the University of Maryland.

On April 10, 2015, the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business partnered with Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) International to hold DRI’s first collegiate conference. More than 100 DRI-certified professionals, business continuity planning leaders and students were in attendance.