For quite a few years now, retailers have salivated over the idea of mobile phones revealing exactly where shoppers are at all times. Retailers would know which displays customers are standing in front of, for how long and what actions they take right afterward. Unfortunately, even though mobile devices have advanced quite a bit recently, the ability to know location with any precision has been elusive.

Dan Cassler, assistant chair of the Information Logistics Technology Department at the University of Houston, offers an update on supply-chain sustainability - and details both the benefits and pain to be derived from such efforts.

Under the provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, any facility that manufactures, processes, packs or holds food within the United States, and foreign food facilities that export to the United States must register with the FDA. Re-registration must be completed between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 in even-numbered years.

With the holiday season right around the corner, the International Council of Shopping Centers is forecasting a 3.0-percent sales increase for the traditional November-December holiday period.

Kewill has developed version 5.0 of its Kewill Trade software, which manages the direct dispatch of goods from supplier to customer or store, for multichannel, catalogue and internet retailers.

Looking at the 12-month period ending with July 2012, the winery-to-consumer shipping channel has grown to $1.35bn, representing 8.6 percent of the total U.S. wine retail market, according to a report from ShipCompliant and Wines + Vines Magazine.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. lost a bid to dismiss an 11-year-old gender discrimination lawsuit brought on behalf of workers in California after the U.S. Supreme Court barred a lawsuit representing Wal-Mart employees nationwide.

Aldata, a vendor of software for retailers and distributors, has introduced Aldata Mobile Shelf Execution.

Building a profitable service is difficult because grocery stores have painfully low margins. Remember dot-com flameouts HomeGrocer and Webvan? Peapod, a pioneer in the space, still delivers in such cities as Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, but recently it's resorted to opening actual pickup locations to make the model work. FreshDirect has come as close as anyone to building a brand around home grocery delivery, but it remains small, operating primarily in the New York area. Yet, Amazon seems poised to move into the business in at least two California cities.

Logility Inc. has made available a new application that enables SKU-level planning for products where traditional forecasting techniques are ineffective.