OPERATIONS / SUPPLY CHAIN

Secaucus, N.J. - The Children's Place Inc. has announced that Lou Lipschitz, a member of its board of directors and chair of the Audit Committee, has passed away. Lipschitz served on the board of directors since 2008, and was the chair of the Audit Committee and a member of the Nominating and Corporate Governance committees.

Prior to joining the Children’s Place board, Lipschitz served as the executive VP and CFO of Toys “R” Us Inc. from 1996 until his retirement in 2004.

San Francisco – Williams-Sonoma Inc. has shuffled the positions of several top executives. Chief strategy and supply chain officer Dean Miller has been named COO, and chief marketing officer Pat Connolly will assume the position of chief strategy and business development officer.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores announced that Bill Simon, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. since June 2010, is leaving the company. He will be replaced by Greg Foran, 53, president and CEO of Walmart Asia, who will take up the post on Aug. 9, reporting directly Wal-Mart president and CEO, Doug McMillon. Simon will be available on a consulting basis for the next six months to ensure a seamless transition.

London -- Fifty-four percent of online shoppers feel that they are more conscious of their security online compared to 12 months ago, following a string of high-profile security breaches at various international retailers and brands. Of the 2,000 online consumers surveyed as part of EDigitalResearch's and IMRG's EcustomerServiceIndex, half (50%) felt that retailers should be doing more to keep them safe online, especially in the wake of yet more data and security breaches in 2014.

Cambridge, U.K. -- Grafton Shopping Centre, Cambridge, is hoping to dazzle shoppers with a “virtual” employee who greets customers when they enter the mall. The shopping center is using the Tensator Virtual Assistant, innovative technology which projects a life-like image of a person.

The display interacts with customers, answering common questions and promoting mall offers. This is the very first use of the technology in a United Kingdom shopping mall.

New York -- Retail websites are getting slower … fast, according to a report by Radware, a provider of application delivery and application security solutions for virtual and cloud data centers. In just one year, median time to interact (TTI) has slowed down by 27% (from 4.9 seconds to 6.2 seconds), and median load time has suffered a 49% increase (from 7.2 seconds to 10.7 seconds).

Dallas -- Corner Bakery Café has implemented Altametrics' E-Restaurant and E-SmartClock solutions to improve labor, food, human resources and administrative costs at all of its cafes, with full launch beginning in August. After a three-month test in 10 company-owned stores, Corner Bakery Cafe implemented ESmartClock technology, which features an easy-to-use touch-screen and provides real-time visibility, monitoring and alerting of critical labor elements such as proactive notification of an employee approaching overtime.

Redwood City, Calif. -- Oracle Corp. announced it is opening a cloud development center in Seattle, its first such center outside of California. The company, which plans to hire about 100 engineers to start, said it chose Seattle to take advantage of the “deep expertise” in cloud computing available in the city’s rapidly growing technical community.