Today's (2003.09.11) Wall Street Journal front page has an article describing how J.C. Penny in the U.S. has outsourced the inventory management, including sales forcasting, of some of their men's shirts product to a company in Hong Kong called TAL group (company website). This Hong Kong based company pull sales data directly from each JC Penny's store and forcast inventory needs for them, manage the manufacturer in Taiwan and ships the shirts directly to each branch.