UPS have announced plans to furlough approximately 300 of its 2800 airline pilots. The company has been working with its union, the Independent Pilots Association (IPA), for the past year to identify ways to cut operating costs including pilots taking short- and long-term leaves of absence; job sharing; reduction in flight pay guarantees and early retirement.

The pilot furloughs will be part of a company-wide cost-cutting program that UPS has been working on over the last two years. The $1.4 billion cost reduction has included a freeze on management salaries; suspension of the match for 401(k) plans and retiring older aircraft. In January, UPS announced it was streamlining its entire domestic small package structure, eliminating 1800 management and administrative positions.

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Estimates of imports in December showed the first increase in thirty months at US container ports. According the Port Tracker, published by the National Retail Federation (NRF), the first five months of 2010 should see increases over 2009. The rise in imports is forecast as economists expect to consumers to return to the stores in 2010. Retailers have spent most of 2009 in destocking mode and a rise in imports reflects some optimism in the retail industry as a period of restocking commences.

Port Tracker measures the volume from the top ten US ports and 2009 saw imports fall considerably over 2008, a 17 percent decline, and the lowest import volume since 2003.

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Panorama Consulting has published the results of a study on ERP implementation entitled 2010 ERP Report which looked at the gaps between expected and actual results achieved on enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects. Panorama highlights five key results from the study:

1. ERP implementations take longer than expected with 57 percent of projects extending the project timeline.
2. ERP implementations cost more than expected with 54 percent of ERP implementations exceeding the initial budget.
3. A larger percentage of ERP implementations under-deliver business value. The study showed 41 percent of projects failed to realize at least half of the business benefits. In addition, 40 percent had major operational disruptions after go-live.
4. Change Management is a major problem for companies that implement an ERP suite. Over 53 percent of companies believed their ability to deal with change as fairly poor or very poor.
5. Software as a Service (SaaS) projects take less time and cost less than on-premise ERP implementations, but deliver less business value. The research also showed that SaaS projects were more likely to exceed the budget.

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The first mandatory green building standards code has been adopted by the state of California. The code, called CALGreen, will take effect on January 1, 2011 and requires all new buildings to be more energy efficient and environmentally responsible. The code mandates that every new building constructed in California reduce water consumption by 20 percent, divert 50 percent of construction waste from landfills, and install materials that emit low amounts of indoor pollutants.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that the mandatory requirements will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020.

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