Manufacturing Business Technology - December 1, 2005

The battle lines are drawn in the market for enterprise software aimed at large and high-end midsize manufacturing enterprises. After a period of mergers & acquisitions, two big vendors remain: SAP and Oracle Corp.These multibillion-dollar software companies compete head-on when it comes to ERP and supply chain management, but they also compete on the basis of underlying inte...

• Applications and Services
• In brief
• Act of faith yields ROI
• Annals of Amutomation
• Rockwell aspires to be paramount aggregator of plant-floor data
• Demand-Driven Modeling
• Automotive OEMs and suppliers must become "fast fish" to survive
• Redmond Reshuffle
• "It's all about the platform" as two Microsoft units merge
• Small and Midsize Market
• QuickBooks moves up a notch with latest release of business management software
• Solutions for Process
• Sales & operations planning for midsize—now only $240,000

• Business Performance
• "Patent trolls" stalk this land
• Business Intelligence
• Analytics solutions catch C-level attention
• Lean Manufacturing
• Pull-based system leads album maker to shut off MRP functionality
• Offshoring
• Providers and users alike admit to thorny outsourcing results
• Product Life-Cycle Management
• MatrixOne integration technology earns patent; supports business change
• Quality Control
• OEM says test-data system reduces stress of working with contract manufacturers
• Six Sigma
• Océ brings metrics to document handling

• Columnists
• Back Talk
• Good hype versus bad hype (and how to tell the difference)
• Up Front
• High crimes and misdemeanors

• Integration and Infrastructure
• In brief
• It's more than a slogan
• Case-In-Point
• Cross-platform ID management transforms IT infrastructure without replacing systems
• Information Storage
• Demand for servers, storage, services grows at faster pace in process industries
• On-Demand Applications
• Ariba expects subscription model to broaden its customer base
• e-Commerce Standards
• EPCglobal releases road map for easy RFID data exchange

• Security and Wireless
• Intellectual property security basics
• Applying EPC
• CPG makers analyze RFID data for supply chain information
• Beyond User IDs
• Alternatives to password-protected access on the rise
• RFID's Tipping Point
• Prices are falling, but "large retailers" worry about impact on vendor viability

• Views From the Front
• Corporate
• Calls increase for China intellectual-property enforcement
• Customer Relationship Management
• Salesforce.com cites "open" improvements for apps exchange site
• Execution Systems
• Siemens plant summit reveals MES market framed in enterprise-related partnerships
• Information Technology
• It's called "U.S. software patent lunacy"
• MEMS Technology
• Advances in laser scanning applied to supply chain bar coding
• National Manufacturing Week
• Slimmed-down NMW show focuses on SMB sector
• Operations
• Technologies that keep on ticking: PLCs, thermal printers
• Plant Innovation
• Dell opens its largest advanced-production facility in North Carolina
• Standards Development
• Open information & communication technologies road map leads to World Bank
• Trade Imbalance
• Small manufacturers urge stronger action on China
• Using Feedback
• Customer connectivity gains are evidenced in lean manufacturing deployments