Manufacturing Business Technology

• Allegiance University: Flexible education services teach enterprise feedback management
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 7, 2008
  Enterprise feedback management (EFM) specialist Allegiance is offering a full range of educational services that combine computer-based e-learning, instructor-led training, and on-site courses, including a certification program.
  
• Instrument of quality: Sparta Systems and USJade to centralize workflow and tracking for Celerity
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 7, 2008
  A new enterprise quality management project under way for precision instrument maker Celerity builds upon USJade’s deployment of Oracle eBusiness Suite ERP applications and an online customer service portal for managing the return material authorization (RMA) process.
  
  
• AssurX quality management solution shores up supplier networks
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 7, 2008
  Assurx SQM is100-percent Web-based to deliver a best-practices process for companies that are globally managing suppliers and contract manufacturers.
  
  
• Help wanted: Extended sales cycles hurting custom manufacturers
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 3, 2008
  In a newly issued report from enterprise solutions supplier Cincom Systems, sales managers surveyed indicate fewer than 10 percent of their sales forces can sell customized products without assistance more than 75 percent of the time. Cincom believes many kinds of sales issues can be overcome by using a knowledge-management system.
  
  
• Business intelligence: Spotfire brings Web 2.0 to the BI desktop
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 2, 2008
  Spotfire, a division of TIBCO Software Inc., says the newest version of its flagship software, TIBCO Spotfire 2.1, will help customers and partners more easily create highly visual, interactive, and extremely fast business mashups adapted to their needs.
  
• E-Commerce: More than half of U.S. companies want to be all-virtual
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 2, 2008
  A survey of C-level executives at U.S. companies reveals that more than half of these executives (53.4 percent) said they want to shift to a completely virtual company in the next five years.
  
• Career advice: APICS offers five tips for keeping a manufacturing job
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 2, 2008
    APICS, the Association for Operations Management, offers fives tips for how manufacturing and supply chain professionals can stay employed in today's economy.
  
• Succession planning: SAP names co-CEO, eventual successor to Henning Kagermann
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 2, 2008
  After losing one potential successor to CEO Henning Kagermann, SAP has taken steps to retain another. On Wednesday, the enterprise software giant announced that Leo Apotheker will serve as co-CEO through the remainder of Kagermann’s tenure, which is expected to run through May 2009.
  
• JDA partnership delivers SC solutions on HP servers
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 1, 2008
   As a preferred provider of HP Integrity and HP ProLiant servers,Logicalis will introduce its customers to JDA supply and demand chain applications.
  
• Consona complements ERP with Configuration Solutions
  
  By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff, April 1, 2008
  ERP and CRM solutions supplier Consona Corp. has acquired substantially all assets of product configuration specialist Configuration Solutions, which targets to-order manufacturers.
  
  
• Closed-loop RFID drives new market growth
  
  By Frank O Smith, senior contributing editor (fosmith@thewritinggroup.com), April 1, 2008
  Although 2007 was the year that RFID market prognosticators sobered from the deluge of hype about imminent explosive growth—especially for open-loop supply chain applications—the year was far from a bust. Natick, Mass.-based market-research firm Venture Development pegs the total volume of RFID tags sold during 2007 at 1.
  
• SaaS approach to ops performance management finds dashboards' sweet spots
  
  By Kevin Parker, editorial director (kparker@reedbusiness.com), April 1, 2008
  The idea of using “dashboards” to support management decision-making would seem to be just what the doctor ordered. Track the right operational and financial parameters and, with the appropriate analysis applied, fallible “subjective” insight can be replaced by quantitative-based judgments.
  
• Honda at heart: Plexus multi-industry enterprise system built on automotive supplier foundation
  
  By Malcolm Wheatley, senior contributing editor (malcolm_wheatley@compuserve.com), April 1, 2008
  In use at more than 1,200 plants worldwide—and boasting a 100-percent customer retention rate—the Plexus Online on-demand enterprise system from Plexus Systems has to be one of the most successful application suites you've probably never heard of. And with more than 350 functional modules, the description “suite” is surely no misnomer.
  
• Pharma makers secure full chain of custody using Acsis track & trace
  
  By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor (jimfulcher@comcast.net), April 1, 2008
  It's one thing to track drugs moving through production; following them throughout the supply chain is the bigger headache—and one for which there is no magic pill. “As an industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers are taking steps to quickly respond to evolving patient safety requirements,” says Andre Pino, chief marketing officer at Acsis, a track & trace solutions supplier.
  
• Rockwell and Cisco back network integration via standard Ethernet technology
  
  By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor (jimfulcher@comcast.net), April 1, 2008
  Optimizing network integration across the factory floor and throughout the enterprise using standard Ethernet technology brings IT standards onto the plant floor, and is an expressed goal of a growing number of manufacturers. Taking measured steps to help them achieve that goal, Rockwell Automation—a global provider of power, control, and information solutions—and networking solutio...
  
• SOA virtuoso IDS Scheer unveils process governance road map
  
  By Tony Baer, senior contributing editor (tbaer@tbaer.com), April 1, 2008
  By year's end, IDS Scheer will roll out a new engine that will provide what the business process management (BPM) specialist calls “the missing governance link” in the business process life cycle. IDS made the announcement as part of its annual Process World conference held in Orlando in February.
  
• CMS Advisory: ECM systems are not SOA-compatible
  
  By Staff, April 1, 2008
  CMS Watch, an Olney, Md.-based analyst firm that evaluates content technologies, finds enterprise content management (ECM) products ill-equipped to meet the security requirements of service-oriented architecture (SOA). “Separating out the SOA hype from the ECM reality remains difficult, as vendors have aggressively positioned their products as SOA-ready—while most are not,” s...
  
• Siemens bets ERP/PLM integration will continue apace
  
  By Frank O Smith, sernior contributing editor (fosmith@thewritinggroup.com), April 1, 2008
  In January, Siemens AG focused its systems-integrator resources by rolling five operating units into its new Siemens IT Solutions and Services (SIS) division. The largest unit thus affected was Siemens Business Services group—one of the world's largest SAP integrators. The move puts deep systems and industry domain expertise in a one-stop shop aimed at global customers.
  
• ISA advisory: May IT forum connects IT and automation
  
  By Staff, April 1, 2008
  A growing shortage of skilled engineers underlies the need for better use of IT in plants, says Eric Cosman, an engineering consultant with Dow Chemical Co. But “line-of-business managers and IT need to work together,” Cosman adds. An ISA-hosted Manufacturing IT Forum May 20-21 in Cleveland, Connecting IT and Automation, will explore new dynamics for owner-operators, suppliers, and...
  
• Still a dream: mature S&OP processes yet to solidify for European manufacturers
  
  By Malcolm Wheatley, senior contributing editor (malcolm_wheatley@compuserve.com), April 1, 2008
  While 92 percent of manufacturers have a formal sales and operations planning (S&OP) process in place, 62 percent of those haven't gained any quantifiable benefit from doing so. That, startlingly, is one of the findings from a global survey carried out by Boston-based Aberdeen Group on behalf of Atos Consulting, a unit of Paris-based IT services provider Atos Origin.