The Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) appointed Kaiser Permanente and Stanford University Medical Center to its Healthcare Facility Advisory Board to help the council set priorities and steer the agenda towards its mission of inspiring and enabling sustainable, cost-effective recycling solutions for plastic products and materials used in the delivery of healthcare.

Manufacturers spend over 23 billion dollars of product revenue on warranty claims in the U.S. alone, and are relentlessly seeking ways to decrease these costs. A new report, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Warranty Analytics 2012 Vendor Assessment, examines the capabilities and strategies of key vendors of warranty analytics software. The study provides IT buyers and software vendors with a structured review of key market participants: Camstar Systems, Infernotions Technologies, Pegasystems, PTC (4CS), SAP, SAS, Teradata, We Predict, Ltd., and Ubiquiti.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are moving forward with their joint Air Cargo Advance Screening pilot program, according to John Pistole, TSA administrator.

It turns out that small- and medium-sized brick and mortar companies can use analytical tools just as the largest corporations can-or the hottest Web-based social media start-ups or the biggest intelligence agencies with three-letter names.

Advances in analytic technologies and business intelligence are allowing CIOs to go big, go fast, go deep, go cheap and go mobile with business data.

Most large consumer-facing companies realize that they will need China to power their growth in the next decade. But to keep pace, these companies will also need to understand the economic, societal and demographic changes shaping the profiles of consumers and the way they spend. This is no easy task not only because of the fast pace of growth and subsequent changes in the Chinese way of life but also because of the vast economic and demographic differences across the country.

Properly planning for the unplanned - a supply chain disruption of any kind and for whatever reason - means optimizing your distribution center network, having the right modes lined up to transport your goods to market, and ensuring that you choose the best ocean port, says John A. Moseley, general manager, trade development, at the Port of Houston Authority. It also means having a backup port just in case.

Two years ago, the director of sustainability at a $1bn consumer-products company suggested the corporate budget committee add a new criterion in deciding which capital projects to approve: the project's environmental impact. The director devised a metric for measuring the impact in categories such as water usage, waste reduction, packaging and carbon emissions. The idea saved $20m the first year.