Manufacturing Business Technology

• Get what you pay for: service-level agreements work
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  While reliance on metrics is the traditional way to drive continuous improvement, the value of aligning Selling, General, and Administration (SG&A) activities with the strategic priorities of the business is gaining favor as a way to reduce staffing costs and other HR-related expenses, as well as streamline procurement.
  
• MESA and WBF to release collaborative services
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International and World Batch Forum (WBF) are working together to deliver enhanced services to their members. The two associations share common commitments to advancing industry standards and best practices, but do so at different levels in the integrated manufacturing system landscape.
  
• Yankee Group cites PMPO a best-kept secret in the enterprise
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Boston-based Yankee Group says the market for price management and profit optimization (PMPO) solutions is expected to reach $1 billion by 2007. The majority of Fortune 1000 enterprises using these solutions report ROI from profit solutions and improvements of up to 20 percent. Indicators for future PMPO growth are as follows: "PMPO has been the best-kept secret of early enterprise ...
  
• Dell invests in Red Hat
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Computer, has invested $99.5 million of his personal wealth in open-source market leader Red Hat through MSD Capital LP. The investment was made last year, but was only brought to light in April when Triangle Business Journal broke the story. "Dell certainly wants to endorse open source to give customers choice and gain leverage with Microsoft a...
  
• Industry groups say lean practitioner program will be most rigorous effort of its kind
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Positive feedback from a lean manufacturing survey of U.S. companies is prompting three important industry groups to develop a Lean practitioner certification program that will be launched at the Association of Manufacturing Excellence's (AME) annual conference in Boston at the end of October.
  
• In brief
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  webMethods for Compliance, from business integration software vendor webMethods, verifies the completeness, accuracy, and validity of transactions and business processes in accordance with Sarbanes-Oxley to continuously monitor compliance control points without the costs associated with manual testing and controls.
  
• Moline Bearing opts for open-source ERP—on a Mac
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Moline Bearing is a tiny St. Charles, Ill.-based manufacturer of roller and spherical bearings. With six employees, but a global customer base, company President David Fauntleroy has to do a lot with just a few people. By last year, an old inventory management and accounting software system just wasn't able to keep up, but a big-name ERP system was out of Moline Bearing's league,...
  
• Low-cost innovation management tool is suited for the masses
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Coming up with good ideas for new products or process improvements isn't the problem, say most manufacturers—it's getting them from idea to reality efficiently and profitably. New research indicates throwing money at the problem doesn't always help. According to the Innovation 2005 survey by The Boston Consulting Group, less than half of 940 executives surveyed were satisf...
  
• New shipping realities sharpen focus on transportation management
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  It's a seller's market in transportation services, and as a result, manufacturers must rethink their shipping strategies. This is the message Beth Enslow, a VP with Boston-based Aberdeen Group, delivered at an executive session on transportation management strategies sponsored by supply chain vendor Manugistics.
  
• MES market blows through $1-billion barrier
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  The market for manufacturing execution systems (MES) has finally come into its own, reaching $1.6 billion in sales in 2004, according to Boston-based AMR Research. Revenue from sales to North American companies increased from 43 percent in 2001 to 52 percent of total sales in 2004, with automotive, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, and aerospace & defense topping the li...
  
• Vendors combine to help manufacturers identify products customers actually need
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  While product life-cycle management (PLM) technology is said to be a reliable tool for getting products to market faster and cheaper, many manufacturers still have trouble deciding exactly what products they should bring to market. "Too many products get launched that simply don't meet customers' needs—so much so that in a survey that we published earlier this year, manufa...
  
• Where do companies apply S&OP?
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Dynamic sales & operations planning (S&OP) is that set of business processes and technologies that enables an enterprise to effectively respond to demand and supply variability with timely determinations of the right market and supply chain mix, all through the S&OP time horizon.
  
• Industry models for enterprise, supply chain quicken start-ups, if no wheels are reinvented
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Two offerings from IDS Scheer point to a trend in business process modeling software: the shift away from a toolset approach to reliance on pre-built models. IDS Scheer's latest SmartPath solution sets are for chemicals and durable consumer goods. They include ERP modules from either SAP or Microsoft Business Solutions (IDS Scheer resells both); pre-built industry reference mo...
  
• Smarter product development process depends on demand insight, sound infrastructure
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  The ability to develop new products is a competitive advantage. But few manufacturers can know for certain whether a new product will be a big hit—or a colossal bust—until after it's on the market. H.J. Heinz, the Pittsburgh-based food products conglomerate, is one of those rare manufacturers that can separate the winners from the losers early on, thanks to its highly di...
  
• Cisco unveils application-aware smart network
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Capping years of talk about smart networks, Cisco Systems recently announced new technology that would use intelligent routers and switches to manage the applications that run on them. Called application-oriented networking, or AON, it includes a set of blade appliances for Cisco edge routers, and high-end switches that enhance a network's ability to recognize and manage applicat...
  
• Corporate culture issues cited as No. 1 impediment to effective project, portfolio management
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  PlanView's CIO Advisory Council summit, held in Dallas in May, brought representatives from 17 companies to discuss issues and challenges facing IT managers—specifically, how they can effectively leverage IT within the corporation in tight budgetary times. PlanView, which offers Web-based solutions for managing and governing IT portfolios, says comprehensive IT portfolio manag...
  
• Automatic failover, back-up sites, outsourcing among the strategies for ensuring data availability
  
  by Jim Fulcher, contributing editor, August 1, 2005
  After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Arch Chemicals upgraded its security—especially IT security. "We have an initiative that includes how to secure our perimeters, how to secure ourselves from internal attacks, and how to recover if something bad happens," says Al Schmidt, CIO of the Norwalk, Conn.
  
• Rockwell strengthens links with IBM WebSphere
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Leveraging several years of working with IBM in serving the automotive and life sciences industries, Rockwell Automation—a global provider of industrial automation, power, control, and information solutions—recently announced a new relationship that would integrate its plantwide manufacturing execution system around IBM's WebSphere MQ Series messaging backbone.
  
• Metalworker finds "easy" way to data collection benefits
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Co-Line Welding, a family-owned metalworking shop in Sully, Iowa, learned the hard way there's more to accurate data collection than a bar-code system. In an attempt to improve materials management, the company ordered from a catalog a data collection system that proved a disappointment. "It wasn't integrated with our Microsoft Great Plains accounting system, and was just too li...
  
• WCO adopts framework to secure and speed global trade
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  On June 24, at its annual council sessions in Brussels, the World Customs Organization (WCO) unanimously adopted its new Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade. The framework aims to protect world trade from threats posed by international terrorism, organized crime, and other deliberate violators of regulations.