SAP has agreed to pay $83.3 million to i2 Technologies to settle a patent claim i2 brought against SAP last year, CIO reported.

Last year i2 made a claim that SAP had infringed on a number of its patents related to supply chain management.

It seems that SAP has become tired of the long legal process and the new brief filing states that SAP and i2 will license each other certain patents, on condition of the payment to i2, and dismisses the existing legal proceedings between the companies with prejudice, meaning another suit cannot be brought on the same matter.

An SAP spokesman confirmed the settlement but did not provide additional commentary or information beyond that contained in the filing.

In the light of the rising energy costs, P&G has started re-thinking its supply chain management model. In a recent article by Financial Times (you can read the article here), Keith Harrison, head of global supply at P&G mentioned that the new changes are because of energy price dynamics and sustainability movements as well as consumer preference change but among all these factors, energy cost have more importance for P&G.

The fundamental question which P&G is asking is: What is our business going to look like in 2015?

An example of the changes already affecting P&G strategic decisions are: Decision related to a babycare plant being built to meet growing demand in China, located at Xiqing in the northern province of Tianjin, rather than at an existing facility near Guangzhou in southern China.

Please read the piece below which I have taken from Fortune Magazine:

"It was mid-May the last time FBR Capital Market analyst Craig Berger checked with his contacts in Apple's supply chain, and what he heard then was bad news: orders for iPhones for the second quarter had just been been cut 25%.

But FBR went back to those same sources earlier this month, and on Thursday he and Robert Pikover reported "big positive revisions" in Apple's so-called build forecast.

"Our latest checks show forecasted calendar 3Q and 2008 iPhone build volumes have been revised significantly higher, with more than 15 million 3G iPhones plus two million old 2G iPhones forecast for 2008," they wrote in a note to clients.

Apple's official target is to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008."

One of the interesting things in the piece above is drastic fluctuation of the demand estimation. In such an environment, the task of the forecasters would be very difficult as the product is new, historical data does not exist that much and as we see, market preference is changing.

Do you have any idea how they do the forecasting for such a product?

If you have around 30 minutes free of time, please don't hesitate to watch this video because it's very cool. The video which is provided by Research Channel focuses on Food Safety in the supply chain. This is a subject which influences everybody's life. 76 million Americans became sick last year because the food supply chain was not safe enough...



Watch this video and then let me know what you think about this subject..

Professor Richard Wilding of Cranfield School of Management was presented a Distinguished Service Award at the 10th Annual European Supply Chain & Logistics Summit in Düsseldorf, MHW reported.

I think I have already put some videos of him in the Supplychainer but in the case you want to see him talking on the risk management in supply chain, you can click here; he has interesting thoughts.

Managing Director of Logistics Bureau talks in the video I have brought below, on importance of supply chain management for a business and mentions three important things which CEOs should know about supply chain in their companies.



He thinks CEOs should know:

- Whether their supply chain is efficient?
- How much is its true cost?
- How they can improve it...

The video is a good summary of important concepts in SCM so I hope you enjoy it.