Ever hear of the term, "Drinking water from a fire hose"?  No?  Here's some imagery for you:

The title of this blog really should be "5 Things the FDA Probably Won't do for Food Safety Management in 2012."

Late in 2011, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Durban, South Africa to review the extension period of the Kyoto Protocol.  The protocol, created in 1997, is a treaty aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to preserve the current climate system.  The reason why 2012 will be significant is this is the year when all parties in the treaty are expected to have reduced their GHG emissions by an average of 5.2%. 

Here we are - 2012.  This year is shaping up to be one of significance, at least in terms of unique calendrical events.  We enter the year of the Dragon, known for its pioneering spirit.  It's also a leap year and the end of the Mayan long count calendar, marking transformation (or apocalypse, if you believe that sort of thing).

As 2011 comes to a close, I thought this would be a good time to take a look back on some of the most popular topics that have been written about in our humble blog.  That, and I'm one foot out the door, egg nog in hand, so...

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the shop

I really enjoy the holiday season.  I love the change in season, the holiday specials, the gifts, all of it.  Most of all, I love the Santa Claus concept.  Here is a man, a Jolly old Elf if you will, who single-handedly delivers the worlds presents in a single night.  Furthermore, he and his elves manufacture nearly $250 Billion in merchandise every year.  This must be some operation!  So, clearly Santa has some high-tech systems in place to bring the presents to the children of the world.  Let's look at what Santa is running in his Quality Management System:

This past weekend is the consumer event we now know as "Black Friday".  Of course, now Black Friday starts on a Thursday, which is followed by "Small Business Saturday", then "Cyber Monday" (which now starts on Sunday and goes all week).  It seems that in our consumerism society, we tend to make these events larger and larger each year - almost larger than the holidays themselves.  If this trend continues, next year we will all having be turkey dinners in the aisles of Toys R Us, and in five years we will just give in and call it "Black November."

I've been meaning to do a post on what I learned at the conference for a while - so here we go.  We completed our 15th annual EtQ User Conference, then I went straight into vacation (Disney - they didn't say anything about my past posts), and then I came back to work, and tons of work piled up.

With many organizations adopting sustainability initiatives in the past few years, it has become evident of one thing - there is a lot of data being fed into the system.  Energy Management, waste management, emissions, commissions, permissions and the like - there is a ton of data to be tracked.  Organizations have invested in software and hardware to detect and record environmental metrics, collecting this data in to historians and controllers.