Industry Week articles from August 2003

Industry Week archives from August 2003

Hyper-competition hits R&D. (Editor's Page).
August 1, 2003... GLOBALIZATION, INCREASED COMPETITION AND THE RECENT RECESsion have forced changes in U.S. industry and government research funding and strategies that do not bode well for a strong U.S. manufacturing future. The situation hasn't yet reached...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
August 1, 2003... Too Close to Home I very much appreciated your well-written article regarding the fate of manufacturing in the U.S. [Waking Up To A New World, June 2003, Page 22.] Last week I had the incredibly difficult task of announcing to our company...

Give voice to conflict. (Briefing).("When You Say Yes But Mean No")(Book Review)
August 1, 2003... For executives intent on sustaining business success, Silence apparently is not golden. Indeed, silencing conflict wrecks relationships and, thus, companies, contends Leslie A. Perlow, a Harvard Business School associate professor, in...

Get ready for the next SARS: it's time to rethink your supply chain. (Logistics).
August 1, 2003... ALTHOUGH SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRAtory syndrome (SARS), a virus that came out of Asia eight months ago, has not been the threat to manufacturing supply chains once feared, now is not the time for U.S. manufacturing executives to let their guards...

Sharing their way to savings; automakers and suppliers strive for interoperable inventory visibility software. The project driver: the automotive industry action group (AIAG). (Emerging Technologies).
August 1, 2003... WILL COMPETING INVENTORY VISIBILITY software products ever interoperate? By November, the Southfield, Mich.-based AJAG will have its answer. That's when the proof-of-concept will emerge from its Inventory Visibility and Interoperability...

Driving ongoing profitability with EVA. (Executive Word).(Interview)
August 1, 2003... John S. Shiely continues to expand a turnaround at Briggs & Stratton Corp. that was begun by integrating a business philosophy based on Economic Value Added (EVA). The essential principle of EVA analysis is that a company only makes economic...

Machines Italia: turning innovation into productivity.
August 1, 2003... Italian Machinery: Innovation at work in global markets Italy brings a 500-year heritage of creativity and innovation to manufacturing--a culture no other industrialized nation can match. When you buy Italian machinery, you're entering into...

What's your most valuable asset? You! Every new job boosts or batters your market cap. (Brandt on Leadership).
August 1, 2003... SO THE CEO OF ACME WIDGET calls you, and says, in so many words, U Da Man! U Da Man who can crank up slumping sales. U Da Man who can provide new thinking. U Da Man, in short, who can fix her broken company. What will it take, Ms. Acme Widget...

Fearing R&D's flight. (Manufacturing's Global Future).
August 1, 2003... RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IS AN INCREASINGLY CRUCIAL FACTOR IN SUSTAINING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF U.S. MANUFACTURING AMID RAPID GLOBALIZATION. WITH THAT STATEMENT, VANNEVAR Bush, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's science adviser, concluded a...

On the move: truck solutions for corporate fleets. (Special Advertising Section).
August 1, 2003... Do you have a model truck with your company logo emblazoned on its side on your desk? Aside from the fact that it's kind of cool to play with when you can't find any paperclips to unbend during long conference calls, that model truck is an...

IT strategies for manufacturing: information access when, where, and how you need it. (Special Advertising Section).
August 1, 2003... For manufacturing firms, controlling costs is everything. Efficiencies in inventory management, product design and development, and information transfer make the difference between profits and losses. With increasingly demanding customers and...

Profit power! IW's top 50 U.S. manufacturers leverage operational prowess for superior profitability. (Best Manufacturing Companies).
August 1, 2003... SAVVY INVESTORS KNOW THERE' S ALWAYS A HEDGE IN A DOWN MARKET. Companies that buck the trend and deliver dependable--if not spectacular--earnings year in and year out. For large manufacturing companies balancing a mix of resources and...

Supersize it! The country's largest manufacturers are bulking up with mergers; slimming down with scandal. (U.S. 500).
August 1, 2003... TALK ABOUT A CHUNK OF CHANGE Annual sales of the 500 largest U.S. manufacturers equaled $3.6 trillion or one-third of U.S. gross national product in 2002. The revenue total was down slightly from the previous year. New factories in the...

Content management grows up: ECM spreads a Web-focused concept to the entire enterprise. (E-Commentary).
August 1, 2003... JUST WHAT THE HECK IS ECM, and should manufacturers care, anyway? When the Internet first landed on these shores and proceeded to conquer all of Corporate America, every manufacturer hurried to get a home page up. Content management was...

Out with the old, in with the new: Aventis Pasteur Inc. bids farewell to an old Pennsylvania facility to make room for bigger and better. (Locations).
August 1, 2003... NESTLED IN THE EASTERN Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains is the Aventis Pasteur Inc. campus. Composed of 35 buildings on 270 acres, the Swifiwater, Pa.-based subsidiary of Aventis Pasteur SA, Lyon, France, provides a range of vaccines including...

Guarding against deflation. (Financial & Economic Trends).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... Even as they try to get in some summer relaxation, Chairman Alan Greenspan and the 11 other members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will be wary of an unwelcome vacation visitor: deflation. "The Fed is still more concerned about...

On the cusp. (Financial & Economic Trends).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy was still contracting--albeit narrowly--during June. The Tempe, Ariz.-based Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) manufacturing activity index was at 49.8% in June, a bit higher than May's 49.4%...

Something to talk about: Lockheed Martin division bridges merger gap with formal communications-improvement plan. (Be Practices).
August 1, 2003... ASK MOST MANUFACTURING EXECUTIVES HOW they foster internal communication and you'll hear about newsletters, intranets and staff meetings. Communications is a product, event or a department--not a strategic process. Wrong, says Linda Dulye,...

How Bush's tax cut will really work: look for action on the supply side; market growth is key to spending. (Evans on the Economy).
August 1, 2003... I HAVE BEEN IN THE ECONOMIC FORE-casting business for quite some time--40 years, to be precise-- and I have never seen so many conflicting opinions as on the economic merits of President George W. Bush's latest tax cut. More curiously, I have...