Manufacturing Business Technology

• Oil, manufacturing, and China boost April trade losses
  
  United States Business and Industry Council (USBIC), June 10, 2008
  The USBIC reports that the April trade deficit jump was led by manufacturing, high-tech, oil, and goods trade with China—all surging by double-digit levels.
  
• Apatar blends IBM DB2 with third-party apps; cleanses mainframe databases
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 10, 2008
  A new connector allows users to read/write data from/to DB2 tables, integrate from multiple data sources, and improve the quality of data extracted from or written to IBM DB2 products.
  
• Visible solutions: VAI and 360 Verticals target food distribution market
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 9, 2008
  VAI (Vormittag Associates), a vendor of enterprise solutions for the distribution, manufacturing, retail, and service industries and an IBM Premier Business Partner, announces a partnership with 360 Vertical Solutions LLC.
  
• Team for talent: SuccessFactors and IBM to deliver people/performance management to global enterprises
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 9, 2008
  A new parternship underscores how performance and talent management market is thriving as global companies are looking for new and better ways to engage and develop their global workforces, aligning them closer to high-level business objectives.
  
• NAM Report: Exports keep U.S. economy out of recession
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 9, 2008
  “With the right trade policies, we can continue to see strong performance of manufactured goods exports supporting U.S. economic and job growth,” notes Emily DeRocco, president of The Manufacturing Institute. “That is why we have to keep U.S. exports growing by implementing the remaining trade agreements with Columbia, Korea, and Panama that will further open markets to American-made goods and services."
  
• The right move: Siemens PLM achieves strong first-year gains
  
  Frank O Smith, senior contributing editor, June 9, 2008
  Siemens’ $3.5-billion acquisition of UGS in May 2007 was viewed by some as a potential reordering of the product life-cycle management (PLM) market. At the same time, it raised speculation about how well the newly created Siemens PLM software unit would fair inside a traditional industrial hardware company. One year later, consensus at the recent Siemens PLM media and analyst briefing, held in Boston May 20-21, strongly validated the move.
  
• RedPrairie betters inventory management flexibility for 3PLs
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 9, 2008
  A new software execution suite release improves receiving, inventory ownership, and billing capabilities 3PLs need to better manage public warehousing.
  
• Ariba's contract-management solution curbs maverick spending
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 9, 2008
  Spend management vendor's latest solution release enables companies to create, manage, and drive compliance with various types of commercial agreements.
  
• SYSPRO quality management solution serves small and midsize market
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 9, 2008
  A new quality management module codeveloped by SYSPRO and uniPoint integrates with ERP, and focuses on Lean and Green manufacturing/distribution.
  
• Spending survey: IT departments slow to invest in systems that create customer value
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 4, 2008
  While 72 percent of information technology (IT) managers at build-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturers rank becoming customer value-driven as their highest priority, only 25 percent have plans to evaluate the front-office infrastructure and processes often crucial to creating customer value. This is according to a research report recently released by software maker Cincom Systems.
  
• Enterprise 2.0 Social networking site offers advice on how to sell services
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 4, 2008
  MaintenanceNet, Inc. has created an online community for people who make a living marketing and selling aftermarket service agreements. The community, called Selling Services, is billed as a social networking site for individuals seeking to make professional connections and become more proficient at marketing and selling services.
  
• New Report: Millions of U.S. workers could gain from green industries
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 4, 2008
  A coalition of conservation and labor groups argues that a fast transition to a green economy could solve America’s energy and employment problems simultaneously. The argument is based on the findings of a report examining the types of job skills that would be required to support a green economy.
  
  
• Government policy: Trade group wants R&D tax credit restored
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 4, 2008
  A coalition of trade associations is urging Congress to act quickly in restoring the federal Research & Development (R&D) Tax Credit that was allowed to expire at the end of last year. A group calling itself The R&D Credit Coalition is using an Ernst & Young study on the impact of the tax credit to bolster its argument for its restoration.
  
• Former Mexican president: You won’t lose jobs by thinking global
  
  Sidney Hill, Jr., executive editor, June 3, 2008
    What could be better for the U.S. than a healthy neighbor? Vicente Fox, president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, posed that question during his keynote address at the recent AMR Research Supply Chain Executive Conference.  
  
• Electronic commerce: Survey says external integration still lacking among businesses
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 2, 2008
  A surprising 95 percent of supply-side survey respondents trade electronically with less than half of their customer base.
  
• Collaboration tools: Adobe’s enhancements to Acrobat include links to online services
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 2, 2008
  Adobe Systems on Monday introduced a significant upgrade to its Acrobat software program for creating and sharing documents. The company also introduced Acrobat.com, a set of online services that can be used to create documents and establish communities for collaborating around them.
  
• Shared services: Metastorm enhances BPM suite
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, June 2, 2008
  Version 7.6 of Metastorm's business process management (BPM) software suite expands to a shared services platform, including extended support for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
  
• As SOA adoption solidifies, good governance is recognized as critical next step
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2008
  Jerry Kelly, CIO and VP of 3Com, a global supplier of converged voice and data networking solutions, believes good governance is the cornerstone of success with service-oriented architecture (SOA). “It's absolutely imperative,” he says, adding that strong governance capability “was a big benefit [apart from] everything else we got with webMethods from Software AG.
  
• IBM investments: Telelogic acquisition finalized; EnterpriseDB gets backing
  
  By Staff, June 1, 2008
  Almost a year after making its original $745M offer, IBM completed its buy of Telelogic AB in early April, and plans to play a larger role in the software development aspects of product life-cycle management (PLM). Under the deal, Telelogic will be folded under IBM's Rational software brand, which is known for tools used across all stages of the software development life cycle.
  
• I/O worth millions: Weak economy signals IT's opportunity to improve data center performance
  
  By Frank O Smith (fosmith@thewritinggroup.com), June 1, 2008
  The next time financial cutbacks are on the table, consider virtualization technology to improve data center performance and achieve cost savings. Virtualization can increase network, storage, and hardware utilization, allowing organizations to reduce the number of power-consuming servers, and improve application and network performance.