Beauty retailer Sephora has gone live with RedPrairie’s Warehouse Management System at its distribution centre in Utah.

UPM Raflatac has opened an RFID manufacturing site in Guangzhou, China, as it plans to reinforce its service level particularly in the Asian market.

The Individual Contribution Award is different from all the other categories in the European Supply Chain Excellence Awards: you, the reader, nominate the candidates and vote by email for the winner.

The Team of the Year category is one of the most difficult to assess. Team work can mean very different things to different people. And of course, it would be hard for any supply chain to develop, transform or improve significantly in an environment where

Logistics and fulfilment is a core element of supply chain management, so of all the categories this is the one where virtually all our entrants could have made a worthy contribution – and indeed, nine of them did.

Innovation is a tricky thing to assess. Whereas many may believe they are being innovative with their initiatives, others may see those approaches as merely good practice solutions or perhaps just novel developments.

The Sourcing & Procurement category came down to a shortlist of three companies – British Ceramic Tile, Haldex and Hewlett Packard CDS.

In previous years the judges have been disappointed that few entries emphasised the environmental, sustainability or wider Corporate Social Responsibility aspects of their submissions.

The Public Sector, Services & Utilities category is one of the most difficult awards to judge. The great diversity of entries, from power generation and railways to medical services, makes direct comparison a tough task.

This year German companies dominated the shortlist for the Aerospace, Defence & Industrial category. What is more, this was a high scoring sector and that always makes the judging a little more difficult.