Management moves
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 1/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
Product life-cycle management vendor Aras Corp. has appointed Rick Lucier to CEO. Lucier was instrumental in growing Innoveda, a electronic design automation company, from $50 million to $110 million in annual sales. Senior management roles at Innoveda, Viewlogic Systems, and Synopsys included president, COO, and group VP.
Rockwell Automation has elected Keith Nosbusch president and CEO—effective Feb. 4, 2004—succeeding current CEO Don H. Davis, who will continue his role as chairman of the board. Nosbusch began his career in 1974 when he joined Allen-Bradley as an application engineer, with subsequent appointments leading to president of Rockwell Automation Control Systems in November 1998.
Industry analysts note, in general, that much of the logistics infrastructure in China is fragmented and confined to regional boundaries. Also, a lack of connectivity between rail, ocean, and truck transport means it's difficult to track goods. Recognizing those challenges, Descartes Systems Group recently joined up with Beijing China Railway United Logistics Co. (BCRUL) to build and operate a real-time logistics information platform leveraging the nation's railway network, and offering integrated logistics services for sea, air, and other transportation in China.
CSB-System International, which offers ERP software for the food industry, has expanded its partnership role with IBM by offering a solution on the Linux platform, with functions such as inventory management, production yields, and automated shipping. All modules are tuned with food-specific features. Friedman Corp.—another ERP vendor, but with solutions for the discrete to-order manufacturer—has joined IBM's ISV Advantage initiative to deliver Friedman's Frontier eBusiness solution on IBM's WebSphere platform, all designed for the small and medium-size business (SMB) market. "The biggest issue for SMB customers is they can't afford a lot of IT staff," says Friedman President Craig Yamauchi. "Leveraging the size of IBM [through its various partner initiative programs] gives us the ability to deploy Frontier solutions to our niche of SMB customers."
Analyst company Gartner acknowledges that "Content-Process Fusion"—the integration of business processes with context-relevant content—is long overdue. Business process management software vendor Fuego and Systemware, an enterprise content integration vendor, have teamed up for a process-enabled content solution that they call Enterprise Content/Process Fusion, which allows companies to link together their business processes with the enterprise content essential to performing those processes. The combination seeks to streamline business processes and manage related content, including documents, reports, images, and video.
MRO Software's MAXIMO MainControl IT Asset Management solution will be integrated with Hewlett-Packard's OpenView Service Desk technology as part of a solution for services relating to total cost of ownership assessment; IT asset management; procurement & provisioning; installation, moves, adds, changes & disposals; software management; and protection & security services. HP also plans to deploy the solution to manage its internal IT assets worldwide.
