Times change. So have we.
By Kevin Parker, editorial director -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 12/1/2004 7:00:00 AM
MSI magazine is always looking at—and constantly evaluating—its products and services. We want to reach our readers in a way most convenient for them, and that fits in with their daily activities. MSI's Webcasts, e-newsletters, and digital edition are testimony to that effort.
One aspect of this convenience is the magazine's name, which should succinctly express its focus on "how IT can best improve productivity in manufacturing and supply chain."
Given the wide range of business and production processes now automated, streamlined, and made more flexible through the use of IT, as of January 2005, MSI will be renamed Manufacturing Business Technology, which better identifies for our readers the publication's subject matter. The magazine will be found online at www.MBTmag.com.
If you can say one thing about MSI, it's a brand that doesn't hesitate to change with the times. Besides having in recent years introduced the aforementioned online products and services, in September 2003, readers were presented with a redesigned MSI that demonstrated our cognizance of the changing needs of our readers, offering crisper articles and a plethora of information pointers.
Last September MSIalso addressed the increasing sophistication of its audience, engaged at that point where IT infrastructure and business-process concerns come together. IT-based innovation has shifted from exclusive focus on the manufacturing system for plan, source, make, and deliver to a wider range of technologies—e.g., business intelligence, enterprise application integration, and RFID; and entire new categories of concerns, such as globalization, performance management, security, and compliance management.
That commitment to following readers' evolving interests into new subject areas will continue in 2005.
What won't change is our dedication to covering one of the biggest stories of this our time: how IT has transformed the way many types of work is done. It's a good thing, too. Increasing productivity lets manufacturers affordably supply us—and, in fact, a growing percentage of the world's population—with the basic goods and services that are the starting points for happy, meaningful lives.
But the fundamental changes being wrought by pervasive IT present challenges as well.
How can companies control IT total cost of ownership so as to take advantage of continuing IT innovation? How will the switch from a seller's to a buyer's market change the IT industry itself? How much further change can manufacturers absorb, given the level of investment already made in the installed base? How must management practices change, given real-time information and collaboration? In fact, is real time always a good thing?
How IT solutions are bought, implemented, and managed is changing. So too Manufacturing Business Technology will continue to change.
