Manufacturing Business Technology

• Financial compliance measures cause some companies to look again at lax systems access
  
  by Scott Bury, contributing editor, August 1, 2005
  Enterprise Strategy Group, a Milford, Mass.-based storage and information management analyst firm, reports 46 percent of IT managers have found active accounts belonging to ex-employees on their networks, even though 55 percent believe "access control is their organization's highest security priority in relation to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
  
• Auto-ID system reads hundreds of bar codes simultaneously
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Between the tried-and-true technology of the bar code and the still-developing promise of RFID lies an alternative: the Visidot system from ImageID Ltd. Visidot, based on imaging technology, is capable of identifying and decoding hundreds of unique bar codes simultaneously with speed and accuracy, says Roger Hecker, ImageID product manager.
  
• In Brief
  
  by Staff, August 1, 2005
  Zebra Technologies now supports multilingual bar-code label output for mySAP Business Suite on a Unicode-enabled thermal printer. Unicode is a code page that converts numeric codes into characters for printing or display. Most traditional code-page encoding systems—including ASCII—support 256 characters or fewer.
  
• Finding the right solution for system performance problems
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Anyone who works on a computer has experienced the frustration of having an application respond slowly—or freeze altogether—just when they need a crucial piece of information. But most would be surprised to learn that poor application performance costs U.S.-based companies roughly $27 billion per year.
  
• Interface A standards could be the window to better chip-making processes
  
  By Staff, July 1, 2005
  Web services technology could make it easier for semiconductor manufacturers to monitor and improve their production processes. Some industry experts even believe an emerging communication standard based on Web services could shorten the time it takes to bring $2 billion-plus chip-making fabs online.
  
• Online engine said to boost odds of finding reliable suppliers
  
  By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor, July 1, 2005
  Internet-based sourcing solutions theoretically allow manufacturers to constantly search the globe for new suppliers. In reality, however, few manufacturers can manage more than a handful of supplier relationships—and even that can be difficult given the amount of data that must be combed on a regular basis to grade each supplier's performance.
  
• Brand-aware QMS vendor changes its name
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Document Control Systems, which sells the MasterControl quality management system (QMS), has changed its name to match its product. "The MasterControl brand embodies our drive to reach beyond providing software and truly help our customers to master quality and regulatory compliance issues. Adopting it as our company name is a logical step for us," says Jon Beckstrand, CEO of Master...
  
• Customer management vendors in heated battle to meet user demand
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Siebel Systems may have invented the CRM software space, but users seem to believe Salesforce.com has perfected the model for how CRM software should be delivered. Boston-based AMR Research expects companies to increase spending on CRM software by more than 8 percent in 2006, a major jump from the 2-percent increase reported in 2004.
  
• Manufacturers finding deals on eBay
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  With 147 million registered users worldwide, online auction site eBay claims to be the most popular shopping destination on the Internet. It also is becoming a popular place for small and midsize manufacturers to buy and sell industrial equipment. More than $1.4 billion worth of goods changed hands on eBay's Business and Industrial site in the first quarter of 2005 alone, according ...
  
• Manhattan Associates means more than warehouse management
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Pete Sinisgalli wants the world to know that Manhattan Associates is "more than a warehouse management company," and he believes he has the numbers to prove his point. The most important number is 50, according to Sinisgalli, who is the company's president and CEO. "Fifty percent of new sales last year were warehouse management solutions, and 50 percent were other solutions," he said ...
  
• New standard may send Bluetooth into the plant
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Bluetooth, a wireless specification that offers a way for electronic devices to talk to one another, is still widely viewed as a consumer-oriented technology. But there soon may be another story, based on speculation that Bluetooth could see business-based adaptation, including in manufacturing plants.
  
• ClearOrbit improves Colorcon's inventory picture
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  When Colorcon launched a plan to improve inventory management, a new method of tracking the flow of that inventory was essential. "When you want to reduce inventory while also maintaining your customer service levels, the ability to move things quickly becomes crucial," explains Perry Cozzone, CIO at West Point, Pa.
  
• Intuit makes bid as enterprise player for small manufacturers
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Performance Cruising began using Intuit's QuickBooks in 1997, but when the company nearly doubled in size in 2004, it had reached the upper limits of scalability with its accounting solution. "QuickBooks is a very easy program to learn," says Laura Herschfeld, accounting manager for the Annapolis, Md.
  
• Paper payment still reigns, but electronic solutions are gaining favor
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  It takes a company an average of 40 to 45 days—sometimes as long as 120—to receive an invoice payment. That time is spent routing, reviewing, matching to accounts receivables, and approving for payment. It's said that even for electronic B2B transactions, more than 80 percent are paid by paper checks and reconciled with paper invoices and purchase orders (POs).
  
• Webplan to Kinaxis: supply chain planning to "response management"
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Webplan seemed like the perfect name for a company selling software that lets manufacturers use the Internet to determine exactly when, where, and how to move inventory through their supply chains. But even some satisfied customers say the name hindered the company's ability to market its product, because it didn't describe its full capabilities.
  
• Oracle and SAP battle for ERP dominance: from petty skirmishes to applistructure strategies
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Despite conflict and competition, Oracle succeeded in acquiring PeopleSoft and Retek, and says its acquisition binge will continue. Yet SAP still sits squarely at the top of the market for enterprise applications. The question is, what's next in this battle of the titans? Between them, SAP and Oracle own 62 percent of the ERP market in 2005, according to a survey by Boston-based AMR...
  
• Brooks Software looks to enterprise interoperability
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Last year, enterprise vendor SAP—admitting that manufacturers could not operate in an "all-SAP-all-the-time" environment—announced its Shop Floor Partner Program and an ISA S95-compliant business package, both of which promised to make integration of factory-floor systems with mySAP ERP easier.
  
• GE Fanuc's upgrade to Proficy puts spotlight on MES
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  At its inaugural Discover Series user conference in New Orleans, automation vendor GE Fanuc announced what it is calling a "strategic upgrade" to its Proficy plant-floor software platform. The upgrade places GE Fanuc in the company of other automation vendors that are embracing open standards to facilitate operational data flow throughout the enterprise via manufacturing executio...
  
• Optimization technology evolves process-industry tool set into business solution
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  Pavilion Technologies' release of Pavilion8 software for process industries is the vendor's latest step to position itself as a provider of business solutions rather than just automation tools. Pavilion earned its chops selling industry-specific advanced process control (APC) tools to process verticals, counting more than 350 customers in chemicals, consumer products, dairy, poly...
  
• Where to go for that all-in-one VPN/security device
  
  by Staff, July 1, 2005
  "We have customers telling us, 'My network is collapsing under the weight of the security gear I have to put on it'," says Scott Pope, security marketing manager for Cisco Systems. Now the vendor of networking solutions for the Internet says it has an answer to that problem: the ASA 5500 series of security appliances.