Manufacturing Business Technology

• Former paper industry exchange seeks new customers
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  While most technology suppliers now see the dot-com craze as little more than a bad memory, Liaison Technologies views it as the launchpad for what it expects to be an extremely lucrative business. Previously known as ForestExpress, Liaison was formed in 2000 as a trading exchange for paper products manufacturers.
  
• IT by the numbers
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  The trend toward offshore outsourcing contributed to 6.9-percent growth in IT services markets for 2003, according to research firm Gartner, Stamford, Conn. The total IT services market rose to $569 billion in 2003, compared with $536 billion the previous year, Gartner reports. IBM remains the world's largest global service provider, with a 7.
  
• Counting threads could be the new way of rating servers
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  When looking to purchase new servers, IT professionals may have to stop thinking so much about clock speed and start paying attention to how many threads a machine handles. Threads are the software-based instructions that tell a central processor when and how to handle specific tasks. The major server manufacturers—Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM—are devel...
  
• Security consultant says protecting IT networks is serious business
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  If your company doesn't have a detailed plan for protecting its IT network from hackers, you need to hear this story from Bryan Sartin, director of technology at Ubizen, an IT security services and consulting firm. "An industrial equipment manufacturer was having trouble with generic versions of its product popping up on the market," Sartin recalls.
  
• The state of automotive make-to-order
  
  By Gary Ruderman, senior editor, August 1, 2004
  Make-to-order is a manufacturing process wherein raw material or component procurement doesn't begin—or at the least, the product isn't finished—until the actual customer order is received. Today's producers of the kind of high-value goods typically made "to-order" still have to balance the need for efficient inventory, purchasing, and scheduling policies with the impera...
  
• Assessing those eager to lend a hand
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  If your supply chain's resident gorilla is pressing for compliance with its RFID initiatives, more than a dozen service providers can speed implementation, but engaging with them poses varying degrees of risk, according to the first-ever risk-assessment profile from Boston-based AMR Research.
  
• G2 standard seen as vital to RFID advances
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  RFID applications run the gamut from helping service a retail behemoth like Wal-Mart, to bringing more visibility to the build-to-order manufacturing process. But vendors and prospective users alike say spending on the technology is inhibited by the lack of an interchange standard. What everyone's waiting for is approval and adoption of Generation 2 (G2), a single standard for data...
  
• Components purchasing meets risk management
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  Whether it's tissue or pig iron, an unexpected rise in commodity prices can either be passed onto angry end users or be allowed to chip away at the profit line. Procurement risk management (PRM) seeks to balance demand, futures pricing, contracts, and the inventory that can buffer commodity swings by means of transparent processes.
  
• A key plant metric: ROA
  
  Alex Anderson, contributing editor, August 1, 2004
  As the name implies, return-on-assets, or ROA, gauges how efficiently a company manages to squeeze profit from its assets—the property owned by a concern—regardless of size. High ROA is a sign of solid financial and operational performance, and is generally accepted as a key financial metric.
  
• Pfizer's scheduling solution starts small before going global
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  Until recently, at Pfizer's manufacturing and R&D center in Sandwich, England, materials were received, tested, qualified, and released to manufacturing without benefit of an overall view of product flow. Because information was siloed—or unshared between the eight groups needed to get raw materials to the final product—scheduling conflicts and supply constraints ...
  
• SCOR model expands
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  The newest version of the Supply Chain Council's Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model includes a greater amount of process analysis for returns, and best practices on collaborative planning for forecasting and replenishment, sales & operations planning, and supplier assessment, as well as supplier carrier agreements.
  
• Lean front end at Crane Pumps streamlines customer-facing process
  
  Jim Fulcher, contributing editor, August 1, 2004
  "We're 'leaning' front-end activities to eliminate nonvalue-add and bottlenecks," says Regina Fitzsimmons, a team leader and "lean black belt" for transactional processes at Crane Pumps & Systems, Piqua, Ohio. There's a reason for that. Crane Pumps grew rapidly by acquisition and includes nine businesses and 13 brands, along with eight sales forces, nine customer service team...
  
• Different platforms, different places: same design view
  
  Tim Lougheed, contributing editor, August 1, 2004
  Automotive multinational BorgWarner is expecting to see a faster, more accurate design process following the implementation of new collaborative engineering software. Its ambition is to manage changes in product lines—working with a global network of designers, suppliers, and customers—with minimum hassle.
  
• "Best" investment: a million to recruit 100
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  Best Software is investing $1 million to subsidize its value-added reseller (VAR) community in recruiting, testing, training, generating leads for, and then benchmarking a total of 100 new salespeople by the end of September. The plan calls for grants of $10,000 to participating VARs, as well as ancillary services.
  
• What every executive should know about Web services
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  If anyone in your company has recently purchased a new application—or integrated any existing applications—there's a good chance that Web services are present on your IT network. And that means your company needs to develop a plan for managing Web services. Eric Marks, CEO of AgilePath Corp.
  
• Product data is not visual
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  What's the difference between product life-cycle management (PLM) delivered from a CAD vendor as opposed to a pure-play PLM vendor? "CAD vendors are trying desperately to move toward a bill of material-based data model," says Michael Topolovac, co-founder and CEO, Arena Solutions. "Historically, CAD has been file-centric, involving geometries, drawings, and their properties.
  
• ARC calls for real-time knowledge workers
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  Andy Chatha, president of Dedham, Mass.-based ARC Advisory Group, sees manufacturing over the next decade facing these challenges: Chatha also sees one solution. A company populated with "knowledge workers" armed with real-time performance metrics will make American manufacturing competitive on a global scale.
  
• PeopleSoft claims its software is cheaper to own, easier to manage
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  PeopleSoft says its year-old drive to improve the experience of owning enterprise software is showing results. According to Ram Gupta, executive VP, changes in the design of PeopleSoft's Enterprise product allowed one customer to install a human capital management package for 25,000 users for 21-percent less than its allotted budget.
  
• New breed supply chain systems support today's business models
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  Optimization engines that formed the core of most early supply chain applications must today take a back seat to Web portals and other emerging technologies. "We're seeing a shift away from scheduled manufacturing," says Andrew Carlson, a VP with PeopleSoft. "Manufacturers don't want to see any activity in the supply chain without actual customer demand.
  
• Best-laid RFID plan may be "wait and see"
  
  Staff, August 1, 2004
  The pain and promise of RFID were interlocking themes in discussions held during an ARC Advisory Group conference in June on best practices driving manufacturing performance and logistics operations. At worst, RFID offers little ROI for retailers, and "little or no benefit for manufacturers," says Steve Banker, a supply chain analyst at Dedham, Mass.