Manufacturing Business Technology - September 1, 2007

Having a manufacturing system with a near-real time grasp of operations means a lot more to Carl Morris than measuring point efficiencies. For Morris, president of Injection Technology Corp. (ITECH), the goal is to track the true costs of operations, and manage order fulfillment. At its 30,000-square-foot facility in Arden, N.

• Applications and Services
• Good forecasting tools point the way to lower inventories
• High-profile recalls prompt a hard look at supply chain risk management tactics
• Data historian vendor faces an opportunity and a challenge: scaling to million-tag systems
• Life sciences sector uses PLM to shorten “innovation-to-registration” cycle
• Small manufacturer finds QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions a better fit than ERP
• Can the “L” in PLM stand for lean?

• Business Performance
• ERP-Link business optimization platform drives SAP-Microsoft interoperability
• Introducing business intelligence 2.0
• Airplane components maker moves to digital archiving system for complex document management relief
• Forecast accuracy, overstocks, and expediting comprise widespread inventory management pain points

• Departments
• Back Talk
• Sidney Hill, Jr.: We saw the value of the enterprise service bus a mile away
• In Perspective
• Dave Caruso: SMB advisory: Use ERP to attack “spreadsheet syndrome”
• Julie Fraser: Why buy plant software in a Lean environment?
• Erik Keller: IT market shift: Choose your side and place your bet
• Up Front
• Kevin Parker: Current trends in supply chain management

• Integration and Infrastructure
• Purisma appliances: a new approach to data governance
• SaaS sure is popular, but it won't kill traditional applications
• Ethernet networks—already the standard for office settings—move into the plant
• Mobile software pulls in business system information in the language users know
• Pharmaceutical firms look to logistics providers, RFID to manage shipping of sensitive goods
• Wireless LANs bring newfound freedom, yet corporate databases at risk

• Views From the Front
• Automation vendors address need to govern industrial wireless use of local radio spectrum
• Web-enabled technology makes fast work of trade regulation compliance
• Emerging PLM vendor ecosystems will tame user process complexity
• IBM moves engineering VP to China as part of global focus
• Rockwell Automation taps ICS Triplex for critical process strength
• HP studies the IT infrastructure library with Opsware buy