Manufacturing Business Technology - October 1, 2004

Following the late 1990s global information technology boom, spending in the IT sector slowed dramatically. As a result of this slowing growth, and of other factors as well, the IT industry is restructuring. Some once-dominant players, such as Sun Microsystems, are now but a shadow of their former selves.

• Columnists
• Up Front
• The medium becomes the manager

• Corporate Project
• IT's backbone system
• A Mini-Y2K Snafu
• Move to GTIN standard challenges the masses
• Case-In-Point
• Detailed traceability without the overhead
• In Brief
• In brief
• Levels of Accuracy
• National Institute opens "world's most stringently engineered laboratory"
• Product Data on Plant Floors
• Can product life-cycle management boast direct tie to lean?
• Prognostications and Projections
• Manufacturing prosperity: it's just around the corner
• Supply Chain Education
• Adexa gives a gift that keeps on giving
• Text Mining
• Tools capture unstructured service data
• The Balance of Trade
• China economy hurts Mexico manufacturing employment
• The Goals of Globalization
• McKinsey champions offshoring "value add"

• Departments
• IT By the Numbers
• Hurdles to adopting IT standards
• Metrics That Matter
• The 80/20 rule for performance indicators
• Solutions Spotlight
• Solutions Spotlight

• Information Technology
• Why even corporate execs need to know something about metadata
• Knowledge is power
• BPM Strategies
• Data warehouse architecture is key to performance management
• Business Process Management
• Study finds executive-level interest in BPM lacking
• Case-In-Point
• Beaver Street Fisheries stands to benefit from Wal-Mart's RFID mandate
• Emerging Standards
• With Web services security, there's nothing to fear but fear itself
• In Brief
• In brief
• In brief
• Network Management
• Auto parts maker says network traffic device eases global business

• Operations
• The technology of international trade compliance
• Machine Control and Execution
• Multinational alliance delivers MES for CNC environment
• Project Jumpstart
• Unit-level RFID tagging tried in pharmaceutical supply chain
• Sell It, Ship It
• Fastest-growing private business upgrades systems
• Tag Unit Costs
• Alien Technology uses licensed production method to reduce RFID tag price
• Tempers, Grades and Alloys
• Capture standard attributes to reduce materials spend
• The Annals of Lean Manufacturing
• Does plant intelligence require its own database?

• Views From the Front
• Corporate
• Big Three and suppliers need IT to maintain market share
• Free Software
• Open-source entries may raise eyebrows
• Implementations
• Up and running
• Information Technology
• The SOA is real
• Inventory and Warehouse Management
• When it comes to RFID, vendor rhetoric doesn't quite match reality
• Microsoft Longhorn
• Talk about your tempest in a teapot
• Operations
• Why Siemens raised its bet on execution space
• Oracle Ruling
• PeopleSoft to standardize enterprise apps on IBM WebSphere
• Former JDE customers taking latest chapter in PeopleSoft-Oracle saga in stride
• Plant-Floor Security
• Microsoft SP2 upgrade impacts manufacturers
• Supply Chain Planning
• Vendors regroup around new CEOs
• The Balance of Trade
• NAM capitalizes on WTO breakthrough