Manufacturing Business Technology

• From databases to Web services, enterprise vendors seek new market advantage
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Comparing new releases of enterprise solutions coming out this fall, it would seem three prominent ERP vendors are pursuing three rather different development strategies. The influence of feedback Two years in development, SYSPRO's Release 10 of its SYSPRO 6.0 flagship product is described by the company as “its most important release in five years.
  
• In brief
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  SoftBrands will offer ASI DataMyte total quality software as part of the quality component of the SoftBrands Fourth Shift Enterprise ERP solution. SoftBrands has approximately 5,000 customers in more than 100 countries using its solutions via a global infrastructure for distribution, development, and support of enterprise software.
  
• Genesis Microchip yields visible gains with real-time information access
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Making a profit in the semiconductor business necessitates staying on top of yield—i.e., the proportion of sellable product in every production batch. In semiconductor manufacturing, yield can run from 70 percent to 90 percent, but poor yield at one step can snowball through further stages of the manufacturing process.
  
• The focus shifts from all the available data to just the right data
  
  By Hope Neal, Contributing Editor, November 1, 2006
  Using business intelligence (BI) data to evaluate—and ultimately improve—corporate performance requires knowing exactly what data should be examined and what should be ignored. Mark Smith, CEO of San Mateo, Calif.-based Ventana Research, says a growing realization of this fact is driving the continual shift toward BI platforms that filter and organize data for indivi...
  
• Design collaboration tool shortens sales cycles; raises revenue for Fresno Valves
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Fresno Valves & Castings, Selma, Calif., significantly boosted its revenue stream after it began using a design collaboration solution to support the sale of its custom irrigation gates. "There was a bottleneck in engineering," says Jim Brown, an independent consultant who works with Fresno Valves on business process management and IT issues.
  
• Shop-floor link to PLM could save millions; vendors respond to the notion
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Manufacturers could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year by creating direct feedback loops between production-management and product-design applications, according to a University of Michigan engineering professor. And at least two software vendors claim to be developing solutions to forge those links.
  
• Cognos partners with Constar for S&OP blueprint
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Capitalizing on evolving market requirements for business performance solutions, Cognos is developing a series of industry-specific Performance Blueprints that move beyond basic business intelligence tools to offer pre-configured data, process, and policy models incorporating best practices.
  
• Industry groups, alliances collaborate for top-floor/shop-floor interoperability
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  The name is both descriptive and prescriptive: Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group. Comprised of members from five organizations, their collective goal is to foster greater interoperability by ensuring individual endeavors are harmonious rather than at cross currents. Doing so benefits solutions vendors attempting to deliver interoperable technology—but ...
  
• Symantec warns: New threat is data theft, not network disruption
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Electronic security vendor Symantec says it has seen a rise in malicious code—including viruses, worms, and trojans—targeted at enterprises. "Threats are aimed at specific enterprises with fraud or theft of confidential information in mind," says Dean Turner, executive editor of Symantec's recently published Internet Security Threat Report.
  
• Optimization supplier to enterprise vendors finds entry to applications business
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  ILOG, a vendor of rules-management systems and optimization technologies used by enterprise and supply chain vendors, may shortly enter the applications business itself. ILOG's new product offering, the Optimization Decision Management System (ODMS), has a reporting engine for ILOG optimizations.
  
• Integrator says common practice for supervisory control security isn't good enough
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has recognized that there are significant vulnerabilities to the "control systems that govern our critical infrastructures," and that the challenge of securing them against cyber threats poses a grave problem. This past July, PlantData Technologies completed its 50th control-system security audit.
  
• SOA harnessed for manufacturing-centric "business process applications"
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Vitria may soon become a more familiar name to manufacturers. The supplier of enterprise application integration and business process management tools is developing applications that support manufacturing-centric processes. The first of these applications, called Perfect Order, ties together pieces of ERP, and customer relationship and supply chain management applications involve...
  
• Furniture maker finds, moves inventory faster with wireless technology
  
  By Malcolm Wheatley, Senior Contributing Editor, November 1, 2006
  By installing Symbol Technologies mobile computers linked to a Symbol wireless network, furniture manufacturer Fraenkel Co. increased finished goods inventory accuracy, says Donna Holten, director of IT at the Baton Rouge, La.-based company. Previously, Holten explains, products were scanned at the end of the manufacturing line—or, in the case of third-party products, on recei...
  
• IBM issues an SOA laundry list
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  As part of a large rollout of service-oriented architecture (SOA)-focused products and services, IBM now has vertical-industry offerings that fall under the brand IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric, and incorporate functionality from IBM's recent Webify acquisition with the existing WebSphere Process Server.
  
• Free tech support and education the order of the day
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  
  
• Oracle, IBM release content solutions for SOA environments
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  New Oracle Content and Records Databases target companies dealing with content in mostly unmanaged environments. The two new products are options for the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and include interfaces for use within a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to content-enable business processes and applications.
  
• Glovia unit says SaaS plus services will meet the ERP needs of underserved small manufacturers
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  While the success of CRM vendor salesforce.com is well known, use of software-as-a service (SaaS) as a delivery model for enterprise resources planning (ERP) solutions has yet to hit full stride. A bet is being placed, however, by a formidable technology vendor that—backed by the right mix of functionality, implementation services, and infrastructure—discrete manufactur...
  
• Lenghty recovery times follow supply chain disruptions
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  More than two-thirds of companies that experienced supply chain disruptions say it took more than a week to recover, according to a study by New York-based Accenture. The study, which polled 151 supply chain executives in U.S. companies with revenues of $1 billion-plus, indicates 73 percent of executives saw disruptions in the past five years.
  
• Product intelligence solution strengthens its search
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  Centric Software's InSight 6.0 offers a high degree of built-in intelligence for recognition of product and technical content. InSight discovers and classifies results based on common product attributes from CAD, product life-cycle management, product data management, and ERP systems; as well as PDFs and email.
  
• SIM study reveals what's keeping IT executives awake at night
  
  By Staff, November 1, 2006
  CEOs and CIOs are placing more emphasis on security technologies; business process management (BPM); and business intelligence (BI)— but alignment of IT and business strategies remains their top concern. That's according to an annual survey commissioned by the Society for Information Management (SIM), which puts Web services at the top when it comes to applications and tech...