Sales and operations planning (S&OP) has been considered a best practice in the manufacturing industry for the past 25 years. Initially started as a process to balance demand and supply, S&OP has evolved into a more robust integrated business planning (IBP) process that links strategic plans with product portfolio reviews and new product introductions, unconstrained demand plans, supply plans and capabilities, and financial appraisals of the integrated business plans over a planning horizon of 24 months or more.

Sanofi-Aventis said that buying Canderm will allow it to consolidate its dermatology products under the Canderm umbrella to create a Canadian leader in its field and to double its Canadian healthcare sales.

 Founded in 1972, Canderm, which is based in the Montreal borough of St. Laurent, had 2009 sales of $24 million. It holds about 10 percent of the non-prescription anti-ageing skincare market in Canada.

The company's product range includes cosmeceuticals and dermatological products, injectable dermal fillers and over-the-counter products.

The plant, to be named Shams 1, will have a 100 megawatt capacity and would qualify for carbon credits under the United Nation's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It will be constructed in the desert, 75 miles from Abu Dhabi.

The plant, which will cover an area of 2.5 square kilometres, is designed to offset the equivalent of 175,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. It will contain 768 parabolic trough collectors, to be supplied by Abengoa, with an initial operating lifespan of 25 years.

A memorandum of understanding for the Interconnection Turkey-Greece-Italy project, or ITGI, was signed yesterday in Ankara between Edison, Turkey’s state- run natural gas company Botas and Greek natural gas company Depa.

The ITGI project aims to transport an annual eight billion cubic metres of gas to Italy by upgrading existing infrastructure in Turkey and Greece and building a final link to Italy.

National Starch, a subsidiary of the former UK group ICI, was taken over by Netherlands-based AkzoNobel as part of its acquisition of ICI in January 2008, but isn't considered part of AkzoNobel's core business. AkzoNobel is the largest coatings and specialty chemicals company in the world.
In 2009 National Starch had revenue of $1.2 billion from sales of specialty starches to local and multinational customers in the food, papermaking, consumer and industrial markets. With 2,250 employees around the world, it operates 11 plants in eight countries.

Caterpillar Inc. has said it plans to invest almost $700 million over the next four years to start producing mining shovels and expand production of its trucks at plants in Illinois and India.  Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, said it plans to add a new mining shovel production line at its Aurora, Illinois plant as well as expanding truck production in Decatur, Illinois and Chennai, India. The new mining shovels will range from 125 ton to 800 ton models.

A group led by the Italian energy group Edison has signed a deal for a pipeline to carry Caspian gas to Italy via Turkey and the Adriatic, cutting EuropeÔÇÖs dependence on Russia as its main gas supplier.

Spain’s Santander is set to acquire 318 high street branches from the UK’s Royal Bank of Scotland as the only bidder left in a sale process that ends today.

The Spanish bank, which is the largest in Europe, made an indicative offer of about £2 billion in April to buy the branches the European Union is forcing RBS to sell, following its government bailout during the credit crunch.

The bid is for 318 RBS branches, part of the former William & Glyn network, plus six NatWest branches in Scotland.

Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, said it plans to add a new mining shovel production line at its Aurora, Illinois plant as well as expanding truck production in Decatur, Illinois and Chennai, India.

The new mining shovels will range from 125 ton to 800 ton models. The 125 ton shovels are expected to be available from 2011, with larger models following in 2013 and 2014.