Industry Week articles from July 2006

Industry Week archives from July 2006

Next-generation outsourcing.(EDITOR'S PAGE)(Editorial)
July 1, 2006... NOW THAT THE HYPE ABOUT OUTSOURCING or, more specifically, offshoring has subsided, the real work of incorporating this important strategy into U.S. manufacturing business plans is underway. The outsized expectations of dramatically reduced...

Lean in education doable?(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Re "Education Revolution," Page 13, June 2006. Why is it that those who think they know how to fix education are never those that actually do the work of education? How exactly does Davis think teachers are going to teach these skills? Ray...

Bar codes: Alive and well; despite the RFID hype, bar codes still are widely used in manufacturing operations.(INVENTORY)(Radio Frequency Identification)
July 1, 2006... YES, BAR CODES STILL EXIST. With all the hype surrounding RFID these days, few people are talking about advancements in bar code technology. But uses for bar codes and their capabilities are increasing, and most manufacturers prefer them...

Pompous and circumstance: Success, dear grads, depends on surviving the boring business dinner.(BRANDT ON LEADERSHIP)
July 1, 2006... DELIGHTED AS I AM TO BE YOUR COMMENCEMENT speaker today, MBA graduates, I must confess to being the bearer of bad news: Your education has been sorely lacking. Trust me on this: You think that you're about to deliver grand strategies to your...

Learning to let go: As manufacturers extend BPO to processes once considered too critical to farm out, they're reaping the rewards--and discovering how to overcome the risks.(business process outsourcing)
July 1, 2006... MORE THAN 8,000 MILES AWAY in Calcutta, India, a team of engineers is designing bottle caps and their production molds for a variety of products ranging from liquor to motor oil. Back home in Indiana, a team of engineers that used to design the...

Hedge the low-wage wager: Manufacturers are still chasing cheap labor around the world. But they'd be well advised not to place all their outsourcing bet on it.(OUTSOURCING)
July 1, 2006... LOW WAGE RATES, PARTICULARLY in such highly publicized places as China and India, continue to drive decisions about where U.S.-based manufacturers locate their production facilities. Indeed, lower wage rates in China make that Asian nation more...

Supply-chain stretch: manufacturers meet growing value-chain challenges with a little help from vendor partners.(Industry overview)
July 1, 2006... OPPORTUNITY AND CHALLENGE. BOTH are by-products of globalization for many U.S. manufacturers. New markets open both for finished goods and for the sourcing of raw materials and components--but the supply chain stretches. Consequently, supplier...

Where's the magic? Support for lean, improved visibility into operations drive investment in plant-floor technology.(REBUILDING U.S. MANUFACTURING)
July 1, 2006... IF THERE'S A TECHNOLOGICAL "SILVER BULLET" OUT THERE, NOBODY'S FOUND IT YET. For years, manufacturers anticipated instant benefits when they installed new software packages. ERP, CRM, SCM--all seemed to promise a world in which production...

Any way you slice it: the IW 1000 list contains myriad metrics. What's the best way to digest them?(Industry Week)
July 1, 2006... TRADITIONALLY, INDUSTRYWEEK PRESENTED ITS ANNUAL list of the world's 1,000 biggest manufacturers in the pages of the magazine. The list, complete with 6,000 data points (rank, company name, revenue, net income, profit margin and revenue growth...

PLM's biggest risk? The narrow view: the best advice: "position PLM as an enterprise operating philosophy, not just as a software tool.".(product lifecycle management)
July 1, 2006... RECORD NUMBERS" IS HOW Ed Miller, president of CIMdata, Ann Arbor, Mich., describes market acceptance of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. In 2005 investments in that enterprise solution grew 8.7% to reach $18.1 billion, a rate that...

Controls center: Rockwell Automation selects Singapore as global HQ for several business segments.
July 1, 2006... MILWAUKEE-BASED Rockwell Automation Inc., a $5 billion global provider of industrial automation power, control and information systems and services, is making a substantial new investment in Singapore, halfway around the world from its...

100+ years and growing strong: a CEO's secrets to long-term success.(Peter McIlroy, chief executive officer of Robroy Industries Inc.)(Company overview)
July 1, 2006... PETER MCILROY, AN IMMIGRANT from Scotland, founded Robroy Industries in 1905 under the name of Enameled Metals Co. "It's one of those All-American stories," says Robroy Industries' CEO Peter McIlroy. "My grandfather got fired from his job at a...

The (still) coming slowdown: U.S. economic growth won't finally 'buckle' until lenders cut back on 'foolish' home loans.
July 1, 2006... DESPITE MANY WARNING SIGNALS, THE U.S. economy has not yet slowed down. Not at all. Over the most recent four quarters, inflation-adjusted GDP has risen 3.7%, precisely same amount it rose over the previous four quarters. There has been no...

Gold-standard stewardship: Newmont Mining Corp. commits to the environment and community health.(Interview)
July 1, 2006... DENVER-BASED NEWMONT MINING CORP. HAS mine sites on five continents and bills itself as the world's largest gold producer. Under the leadership of Chairman and CEO Wayne W. Murdy, the $4.4 billion company has made much of the principle of...

New direction.(Engelhard Corp. merges with BASF AG)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... WHEN INDUSTRY WEEK SPOKE WITH BARRY W. PERRY BACK IN 2002, the chairman and CEO of Iselin, N.J.-based Engelhard Corp. discussed his mission to integrate the company's four operating units into a single organization with a consistent, credible...

Five (and more) change tools: leadership training, CRM top most used list.(customer relationship management )(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... TIMES ARE CHANGING, AND not just for Bob Dylan. Among large U.S.-based multinationals, leadership training and customer relationship management (CRM) are tops in the tool kit of ways to manage change, according to a recent Pricewaterhouse...

Being no.2.(chief operating officers)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... FORMER HEWLETT-PACKARD CEO Carly Fiorina seriously erred by not hiring a "strong, capable" COO to help manage the company through the Compaq merger. That's one of the insights you will take away from "Riding Shotgun: The Role of the COO" (2006,...

Nicely done: industry week's best plants finalists for 2006 are dedicated to improvement, driving for excellence.
July 1, 2006... A COMPREHENSIVE DEDICATION TO EXCELLENCE AND MANUFACTURING performances that shine. These are the qualities INDUSTRY-WEEK seeks--and finds--each year in its annual pursuit of the leading manufacturing plants in North America. This year is...

A nano key to weight reduction: for closed-cell aluminum foam, a nanotech-based process control step brings performance advantages, automakers are testing.
July 1, 2006... WORRIED THAT RISing fuel costs will shrink the object of your automotive love affair? Lighten up because that's literally what carmakers may be doing with a new nanotechnology-enabled weight-reduction strategy. With the nano refinements in the...

Associated rubber improves financial closing, inventory management with ERP.(signs Intercim Inc., enterprise resource planning)
July 1, 2006... NEW SOFTWARE CAN SERVE AS A CATALYST IN HELPING BRING about process changes. That was the case at Associated Rubber Co., which sought to improve its inventory control methods as well as to enable a faster monthly financial closing. "In the...