Recently in Supply chain Category

Google search capabilities have changed and increased significantly over the past year, and more computer users and mobile device users are using Google and other search engines more than ever.  It's just so ... easy!  Much easier than playing telephone tag to ask a knowledgeable friend or expert a question... and that's the search engine's secret sauce. Ease of use...availability...and always having an answer, even if it takes a bit of shoveling of fertilizer to find the right connection or information.

The searching action has become part of the "media" of today. And online search is growing much faster than other methods of information distribution.

Google Leads the Search Pack

It's always fascinating to glimpse the collective consciousness of Google users.

Beyond search queries rising for Michael Jackson, swine flu, Twitter and Lady Gaga, what else did Google searches reveal last year?

• Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than one query per day:
  7 out of 10
• Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than 10 queries per day:
  1 out of 7
• Fraction of Google queries, duplicates excluded, never seen before: More than 1/3
• Fraction of Google queries, duplicates included, never seen before: More than 1/5
• Country with the greatest increase in Google web search traffic in 2009 vs. 2008: Indonesia*
• Approximate percentage of Internet users in Indonesia: 11.1%*
• Average amount of time it takes a user to finish entering a query: 9 seconds
• Average amount of time it takes Google to answer a query: Less than 1/4 second
• Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day
• Proportion of Google result pages that show a map in search results: 1 in 13
• Average increase in driving distance on weekends vs. weekdays on Google Maps: 11km
• Median distance from a user's location to ice skating rinks found on Google Maps: 30km
• Median distance from a user's location to ski resorts found on Google Maps: 300km

Posted by the Google Search Team

Safe and Sustainable by the Book

As part of its commitment to green and sustainable safety concepts, the Code Council is excited to develop a new set of green codes under the multi-year initiative called "IGCC: Safe and Sustainable by the Book."

This initiative will include collaboration from the Council's closest allies and pre-eminent thought leaders in green building, as well as outreach and feedback from our members and the general public.

International Code Council (ICC) is a membership association dedicated to building safety and fire prevention, develops the codes used to construct residential and commercial buildings, including homes and schools.

Where's the beef? Well...meeting value, that is.

Architect Scott Simpson described a concept KlingStubbins called a team structure and the industry now calls Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The concept is key for a collaborative project approach, but its importance is more universal. The phrase that stuck with me was "decision-ready information".

Decision-ready information consists of the key facts required for a meaningful, final decision about a subject to be decided.

In an IPD project, major decision-makers are expected to attend every meeting, so that decisions made in the meeting have meaningful buy-in and closure. These meetings can be intense, not to mention very expensive.
 

It's the responsibility, therefore, of each team member to bring decision-ready information for the decisions on the agenda.

Wouldn't this information design approach make meetings more valuable...and engaging!

The green marketing opportunity here is to demonstrate the sustainability, incentives, and cost saving attributes of your green solution.  Manufacturers can arm their representatives with decision-ready information.

Think about what information -- what key metrics and performance demonstration --  about your product might drive project decisions, and make sure it's available in an easy format for your representatives to bring to the table.

Read more at BuildingProductMarketing.com

New Industries from New Places The Emergence of the Hardware and Software Industries in China and India BY: Neil Gregory, Stanley Nollen, and Stoyan Tenev

We know it's a global world now.  But how does that affect the industry at the heart of US creativity and information leadership?  It's time to look at how China and India have -- and will continue to change the face and guts of information technology.

Over the past 15 years, the twin giants of Asia--China and India--have jumped on the opportunity provided by the IT revolution to turbocharge their economic growth.

India has become a software services powerhouse, while China churns out much of the world's IT hardware.

How did these countries achieve global competitiveness so quickly? Why did software predominate in one and hardware the other?

This book represents the first attempt to go beyond anecdote and generalization in discussing the unprecedented emergence of these new industries over such a short period.

New Industries from New Places  presents the first rigorous comparison of the growth performance of hardware manufacturing and software services sectors in China and India. It examines the economic context and the business environment for private enterprise in China and India, and considers how far differences in economic policies or the business environment can go in explaining the observed distinctions between the two.

The book concludes by evaluating explanations for the growth performance of hardware and software in each country, drawing conclusions for future economic policies and business strategies.

	New Industries from New Places The Emergence of the Hardware and Software Industries in China and India Neil Gregory, Stanley Nollen, and Stoyan Tenev 2009, Available Now Buy this book

Think Green Alliance offers the following services to help businesses outline a sustainability strategy with the goals of establishing a step-by-step plan with carbon reduction targets, using tools for sustainability and carbon measurement/management, as well as ensuring the sustainability plan meets business and ROI goals.

• Strategic Sustainability Blueprint Development
• Carbon Measurement, Reporting and Benchmarking
• Sustainability Audits and Reviews
• Sustainability Best Practices
• Sustainability Whitepapers and Research
• Custom Sustainability Consulting
• Sustainability Project Consulting
• Project Management

The Think Green Alliance is a community of businesses and organizations that are committed to providing environmentally and economically sustainable services, products and goods. As of February 2009, the Alliance membership represents a total of 159.7 billion dollars of annual global revenues and over 250,000 full-time employees.

The Alliance was founded in March 2008 by Jean Jerome Baudry of Baudry Cybernomics Corporation.

For more information, please contact Kim:
projects@thinkgreenalliance.com
416-915-4048 ext. 304

How serious are people getting about the environment? How serious are suppliers getting?

As more companies find ways to work recycled materials into their products, and reduce supply chain GHGs, and end of life toxic dumps in our neighbors around the world... the more we'll see in the growing field of mobile devices.

Phones might look as disposable, self-destruct materials like compostables that just melt when subjected to heat. They are about that disposable anyway!

With more than ONE cellphone for EVERY PERSON ON EARTH... we can't look at cell phones and mobile devices the way we could just a few short years ago. This electronic waste is piling up...and we need to let manufacturers know that we are concerned about toxic landfills and unrecyclable cases and short term usage of billions of pounds of consumer products.

Samsung's Reclaim from Sprint has probably been the most aggressively marketed green phone to date in the U.S., starting with its name and green color. Made from 80% recyclable material and released in August, Current Analysis called it the first eco-phone people may actually want to buy.

Even if the Reclaim is meeting or beating sales expectations, it would be hard to separate its success from qualities that would make it a good phone even if it were made out of regular plastic. Apart from any regulatory or legal requirements, it's not likely manufacturers will focus more on environmental considerations until they see them as an important differentiating factor for consumers.

New research suggests demand for environmentally-friendly devices will power sales of "green" phones in the coming years. A recent study by ABI Research found that nearly half of U.S. consumers would choose a green handset over a conventional phone if price, features and performance were the same.

ABI estimates the proportion of properly recycled handsets will grow from 8% in 2009 to 17% in 2014. A separate Juniper report predicts that even with an incremental shift in consumer attitudes, shipments of green phones will grow from 250,000 in 2009 to 105 million by 2014.

Deborah Fleischer, founder and president of Green Impact, works with mid-sized companies to launch green initiatives . In a recent entrepreneur's coaching event, she observed three key challenges common to many of the companies she spoke with.

1. Lifecycle assessment (LCA): LCA is an approach that considers the cradle-to-grave lifecycle chain involved in producing, using and disposing of a product or service. It forces you to consider materials use, energy consumption and related greenhouse-gas emissions of your product, packaging and transportation decisions.

While larger corporations might have the resources to tackle LCA head on, across the board, the start-ups were struggling with easily accessing good data to help them estimate the key impacts associated with their entire value chain.

A few LCA resources for start-ups to consider include Sustainable Minds, Earthster and EIO-LCA.

2. Packaging: Many of these clean tech products require packaging and pushing for recycled content and avoiding plastic is a challenge for a CEO with twenty other competing priorities.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a great resource on this issue.

3. End of life: Thinking about what happens to these new "clean" products at end of life is challenging. How do you create incentives to get consumers to recycle or return a product? One of the start-ups was considering a rebate program and another planning on using a mailer to make it easy to return the product at the end of its life.

Read more at Matter Networks

Deborah Fleischer, founder and president of Green Impact, works with mid-sized companies to launch green initiatives that encourage innovation and grow market share.

Do you have (or know of someone who has) a company producing green, sustainable, or high performance solutions?

We are launching a "green directory with a difference" -- you get a real opportunity to tell your green solutions story in the listing!  Up to 600 WORDS...and your listing can be included in FIVE categories. 

We also include BOTH Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer categories.  IF we don't have the right category for your solution -- let us know and we'll seriously consider adding it.

The SolutionsforGreen.com site is highly "search engine optimized" and the listings will probably appear higher on Google searches than your own company's listings for key word phrases.  We work hard at building a robust platform of sites to help drive traffic to the directory.  We're serious about greening our world...and want to help others who are also serious about the challenge facing us.  And who have solutions!

We would  love to have your company, nonprofit organization...or even public agency list your green products, green services...and green programs.  You don't have to be in the commercial market.  You just need SOLUTIONS!  Employee programs.  Festivals. Innovator groups. The broader the variety of solutions, the better! 

"Necessity is the mother of invention"...my mother taught me.  And we have necessity.  Now it's time to implement some great, innovative solutions.

And then get the word out for replicating good results.  So add your listing, already :-)

SolutionsforGreen.com

Sun Marketing

GrEEnCollarEdu.net, a service of HVACReducation.net

Mercier Corporation

Carlstrom Productions, Inc.

Green Mary

Orangehalo

Republic Flag

Community Environmental Services, Inc. (CES)

Native Springs Nursery

Oster and Associates

Macus Trade

Atlas Embroidery

Echo Paper Store

Green Career Tracks

Starting Up Green

Cliff Allen Consultant

Michael Lemke Consulting

HVACR Education