Manufacturing Business Technology - June 1, 2004

The beauty of lean manufacturing—when it's working right—is that the flow of material and information is one. Under a "replenishment-pull" scenario, each lean work cell produces only to replace what is consumed by the previous operation, with manual signals called kanban cards triggering material flow.

• Columnists
• Up Front
• The delicate and shifting balance between planning and execution

• Corporate Project
• From slap-and-ship to item-level tagging
• Where not to go, if you're in the technology business
• .NET Architecture
• Intuitive claims it alone fully exploits Microsoft .NET
• Content Management
• FileNet, BearingPoint, others form "compliance alliance"
• Education and Industry
• High-tech employment decline slows, but students prefer basket weaving
• Electronics Industries
• Allocations are back because supply chains haven't matured
• Intellectual Property Rights
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce decries $250 billion in counterfeit trade

• Departments
• Hot Bytes
• BPM hot; news coming out of Sapphire
• IT by the Numbers
• IT by the Numbers
• Metrics That Matter
• New Product Revenue
• Solutions Spotlight
• Solutions Spotlight
• The Politics of Productivity
• The changing face of manufacturing

• Information Technology
• Globalization forces IT pros to attack "margin leakage"
• Application Integration and Migration
• Programmatic interfaces make low-cost work of a legacy evolution
• Case-in-Point
• Sharp Microelectronics uses portal to open/close window on corporate data
• Computing Strategies
• HP acquisitions heat up utility computing race
• In Brief
• In brief
• In brief
• Integration Platforms
• Independent software vendors spinning new apps with SAP NetWeaver
• Operating Systems
• New versions of UNIX under construction near you
• Web Services
• Managing a world of proliferating software

• Operations
• Relieve the burden of regulatory compliance
• Case-in-Point
• Customized software protects against CPG promotion losses
• Brunswick taps data integration hub for warranty analytics
• In Brief
• In brief
• In brief
• Product Information Management
• PLM vendors soup up focus on food, process sectors
• Product Life-Cycle Management
• JT Open progresses, though PLM interoperability remains unsolved

• Special Report
• RFID Readiness
• RFID contributes to tool-crib security, inventory management
• NAM conference to offer RFID implementation plans
• RFID pumps sluggish WMS market

• Views From the Front
• Sterling Commerce bolsters data sync market share
• Corporate
• Easy does it every time, says design vendor
• Implementations
• Up and running
• Information Technology
• The softer side of IT management
• Operations
• Comergent untangles aftermarket data mess
• Project Life-Cycle Management
• Project targets hand-off of manufacturing characteristics
• Project and Portfolio Management
• Emerging IT governance apps can't keep still
• Strategic Sourcing
• Ariba, as solutions provider, will have new competitors
• Supply Chain Management
• i2 chairman says ERP increasingly irrelevant to supply chain success