Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of SAP users believe that SAP had been slow to bring its SaaS suite to market, according to research by the UK & Ireland SAP User Group

Truck makers Scania and MAN are studying the potential for supply chain collaboration – particularly in component supply and pre-development

The new supply chain director of Waitrose is to be David Jones, who is currently the divisional registrar at parent group John Lewis

Marks & Spencer has officially opened its 1.1 million sq ft distribution centre at Bradford - the first of four huge sites that are planned to replace the existing network or more than 100 warehouses.

Shipping company NOL Group has placed an order for ten new TEU container ships from Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, based in South Korea.

Wine and spirits logistics supplier JF Hillebrand has acquired Bulgarian beverage logistics specialist Bora Shipping.

Luxury spirits company William Grant & Sons has chosen Kewill for a three-year contract to deliver global export documentation.

Logistics company DSV has won a three-year contract to provide European services for Molnlycke Health Care worth £42 million (50 million euros).

WE Fashion has chosen Wipro Retail to implement Oracle Retail’s warehouse management and merchandise systems to enable European expansion.

Triumph Motorcycles has signed a three-year contract with Ceva Logistics worth 11 million euros (£9 million) per annum.

Panalpina has promoted Chris Kent to global head of Panprojects, a wholly-owned subsidiary, he was previously divisional director of the company in the UK.

Vanity Fair Brands Lingerie Europe has selected voice technology from auto-id specialist Zetes.

The Christmas peak is expected to come earlier than ever in 2010, so retailers need to ensure their supply chains are prepared, according to OPS Logistics Consultancy.

The main challenges facing supply chains today are managing external factors, such as the global economic crisis, and addressing green issues, according to a report from AMR Research in collaboration with RedPrairie.

Kimberley-Clark and the University of Huddersfield are to take on SCALA's supply chain game, after the first UK competition was won by Cadbury

Mission Foods has partnered with Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) to help the company reduce its energy use and carbon emissions. The company partnered with SoCalGas through its Energy Efficiency Calculated Incentive Program to build a new “green” plant in Panorama City.

The tortilla products manufacturer transformed a 200,000-sq.-ft. General Motors plant into a LEED Gold certified tortilla manufacturing plant that is expected to prevent more than 1,300 metric tons of carbon emissions annually.

Receiving design assistance from SoCalGas, as well as $45,000 in financial incentives to install preheat combustion air for corn and flour tortilla ovens and preheat cooking oil for fryers, the Panorama plant saves approximately 250,000 therms of natural gas per year.

“Working with SoCalGas has helped us to lower our manufacturing and energy costs,” says Lucy Gonzalez, VP Sustainability, Mission Foods. “We are committed to creating sustainable operations — not just lowering costs, but also reducing our carbon footprint.”

Other sustainable efforts include rooftop solar panels for generating some of its own electricity, heat recovery systems, and systems that minimize water use.

Mission Foods also has joined the Cool Planet Project, an energy efficiency and climate change mitigation program administered by The Climate Registry (The Registry) and SoCalGas. The project helps Mission Foods understand the connection between energy usage and GHG emissions. SoCalGas provides business customers that install significant energy efficiency projects with assistance in measuring their carbon footprint and emissions reductions through The Registry.

Stop & Shop has completed the installation of solar panels on eight of its stores in Mass., Conn. and N.J., which will reduce the energy consumption at these stores by more than seven percent. This project is part of the company’s commitment to reduce its carbon footprint by 20 percent by 2015, using 2008 as a baseline.

The solar panels at all eight stores will generate about 1,759,572 kWh, which will offset 1,264 metric tons of CO2 emissions. The solar project is among a series of green solutions Stop & Shop is rolling out across its 375 stores in the Northeast.

The photovoltaic (PV) solar power generating systems were developed by Alteris Renewables.

Stop & Shop is also looking at other ways to be green by installing energy-efficient lighting and refrigeration systems in stores and distribution centers. The company recently partnered with the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund to install a fuel cell at its new store in Torrington, Conn., which will provide more than 90 percent of the electricity needed to power the store.

Stop & Shop has been moving toward greener buildings since 2002.

Large U.S. companies continue to be involved in sustainability, and most companies see an alignment between sustainability and their overall business strategy, according to a new report and related podcast from Deloitte.

The Deloitte report, “Sustainability in Business Today: A Cross-Industry View,” and podcast, “Three Things Your Chief Sustainability Officer Won’t Tell You,” also find that many companies have a gap between their leaders’ sustainability aspirations and the way that sustainability is enabled within their organizations.

The survey indicates the importance of sustainability to the future of the respondents’ businesses and the challenges that sustainability leaders face in trying to align their organizations sustainability practices with their principles.

Among survey respondents, all but three said their sustainability priorities were at least partially aligned with their organizations’ business priorities, says Deloitte. However, a number of respondents noted that alignment was an ongoing process that occurred at different rates in different areas of the business.

BSR’s report, “The New Frontier in Sustainability: The Business Opportunity in Tackling Sustainable Consumption (PDF),” identifies opportunities for companies to deal with sustainable consumption through three key parts of the business value cycle — product design, consumer engagement and use, and end-of-use.

“For years, sustainable consumption has been framed as a limitation on business,” says Aron Cramer, BSR president and CEO, who recently led a workshop on the subject. “But in a world where our consumption patterns outpace the planet’s ability to regenerate resources by 30 percent, businesses that figure out how to deliver enhanced value by radically reducing material inputs and engaging consumers on product use will be well-positioned for success.”

As an example, cited by BSR, design choice for things like material weight and packaging have direct impacts on transportation costs and fuel use, while choices about energy efficiency directly impact energy consumption in a product’s use phase.

In some cases, a focus on sustainable consumption may result in a significant redesign of familiar products, and in other cases, there may be an opportunity to deliver the same value through services (such as car-sharing) rather than products (such as car sales), says BSR.

Findings from these two surveys fall in line with an earlier survey of CEOs released by the United Nations Global Compact and Accenture that found 93 percent of respondents see sustainability as crucial to their future success.

GE is collaborating with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to bring the company’s internal Treasure Hunt program, aimed at reducing energy waste, to cities, universities, businesses, and other organizations. The program has helped GE reduce its own energy use by making improvements to all sources of energy waste including electricity, natural gas, water, wastewater, compressed air and steam.

So far, GE has conducted 200 internal treasure hunts, which has helped the company save more than $130 million annually. The company says it conducts regular treasure hunt sessions to identify energy-efficiency savings at a specific manufacturing site, which typically yields opportunities to reduce energy by 20 percent.

The ecomagination Treasure Hunt in collaboration with EDF will help identify energy savings opportunities for partners. As an example, through New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Hospital Challenge, consisting of New York City’s largest hospitals that have agreed to work together to lower their overall footprint, Continuum Health Partners’ (CHP) Roosevelt Hospital served as the first site for the ecomagination Treasure Hunt program.

The program identified opportunities for $2.1 million in energy savings with a payback of 2.6 years, leading to a reduction of 7,500 metric tons of emissions annually.

The GE and EDF collaboration is an effort to drive energy efficiency awareness and action throughout the nation. EDF is helping GE look at ways to share best practices from the Treasure Hunt process more widely across industries and sectors as well as select targeted sites for the initiative.

Over the next few months, EDF and GE will work to verify energy efficiency opportunities and identify industry best practices at select sites including facilities run by the cities of Atlanta and Orlando, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Merck.

The ecomagination Treasure Hunts at these sites will require staffing resources but there is no direct fee charged for the opportunity.

Del Monte Foods has formalized its environmental sustainability goals, which builds on the company’s sustainable agricultural practices and strategies at its manufacturing facilities to reduce the environmental impact at its cannery operations, and its supply chain to reduce its impact from the sourcing and distribution of goods.

Del Monte’s cross-functional leadership team led the effort to formalize the company’s commitment to environmental goals in three key areas — waste, greenhouse gas emissions and water. The company pledges to achieve or exceed these goals by 2016, using 2007 as the baseline.

In the area of waste reductions, Del Monte has worked to lower the amount of solid waste (per ton of finished product) going to landfill from its operations, and has committed to a 75 percent reduction. Since 2007, two of Del Monte’s locations — the Milk-Bone plant in Buffalo, New York, and the Del Monte Foods Distribution Center in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania — have become zero-landfill facilities.

Del Monte also commits to cut its packaging materials by 15 percent, and has implemented several packaging initiatives to support this effort.

The foods manufacturer also plans to cut GHG emissions per ton of finished product by 10 percent from the company’s manufacturing, warehousing and research & development facilities. So far, the company has reduced its GHG emissions per ton of finished product by approximately 2.5 percent, primarily thanks to a 1.9 megawatt solar panel system Del Monte installed at its Hanford and Kingsburg, Calif. processing plants in late 2008.

The company also pledges to reduce its total GHG emissions by 7 percent through improved efficiency in Del Monte’s transportation network. The company has reduced its transportation miles by approximately 29 million since 2007, which represents an approximate 6 percent reduction in GHG emissions.

Del Monte recently joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Leaders program to help further reduce its GHG emissions.

Del Monte has committed to a 20 percent reduction in fresh water use per ton of finished product. Since 2007, the company has reduced fresh water consumption by approximately 9 percent and is on track to meet its 2016 goal.