Industry Week articles from November 2004

Industry Week archives from November 2004

Online poll.
November 1, 2004... Online Poll Have you made a donation to a presidential candidate for this year's election? IndustryWeek.com readers respond: No 75% Yes 25% Note: Table made from pie chart.

Putting manufacturing back on the national agenda: where we went wrong, and what we need to do about it.(Editor's Page)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... AFTER LISTENING TO THE PRESIDENTIAL and vice-presidential debates, I'm wondering what it will take to get manufacturers' issues back onto the national agenda. Nothing in the early encounters gives me confidence that the manufacturing sector has...

Presidential impact.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... I read Michael Evans' "analysis" with great disappointment, and a growing sense of disgust ["Kerry's Negative Impact," Sept., Page 80]. His column typifies the growing trend of "experts and analysts" who cannot resist turning evaluation and...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
November 1, 2004... In the article "Five Threats That Could Sink Your Company," [September 2004, Page 52], the law firm Halleland Lewis Nilan Sipkins & Johnson's name was misspelled. IW welcomes letters from readers. We will print as many views as space...

Factory to foxhole: RFID deadline looms: in compliance with the U.S. Department of Defense, most manufacturers are putting the finishing touches on their RFID initiatives. Others need to pick up the pace.(Supply Chain)(Radio Frequency Identification )
November 1, 2004... AN EPISODE OF M*A*S*H comes to mind when thinking about how radio frequency identification (RFID) will benefit the Department of Defense. The episode has Klinger telling Col. Potter that the Army sent a surplus of down jackets to the 4077th...

NAM's new CEO: a veteran politician takes over the top spot at the National Association of Manufacturers: 3 quick questions.(C-Level)(Interview)
November 1, 2004... John M. Engler, a former three-term Republican governor of Michigan, has been president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) since Oct. 1, succeeding Jerry J. Jasinowski as head of the 14,000-member...

A heartbeat away?(Time Machine)(medical equipment industry)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... When INDUSTRY WEEK chose Abiomed's AbioCor artificial replacement heart as a Technology of the Year (Dec. 2001/Jan. 2002, Page 43), we were impressed with the company's strategy of going for a "wow" innovation that undoubtedly will be seen as...

Executive unease: report shows business leaders suffer from confidence crisis.(Attitude)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... ALTHOUGH FACTORY output and some other economic indicators have reversed course upward, executives are less confident and energetic, according to a recent survey. The research firm eePulse Inc. and University of Michigan Business School...

Reality check.(Bookshelf)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Confronting Reality" (2004 Crown Business), the inspired new book by former corporate CEO Larry Bossidy and management consultant Ram Charan, could be considered the prequel to their 2002 business bestseller, "Execution." Presumably, a CEO...

Extreme demands, extreme behavior: detrimental executive decisions tied to rising job demands, research shows.(Leadership)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... IT MAY BE GREED that leads corporate executives to make decisions that raise eyebrows or the antennae of law enforcement officials. But such eye-opening behavior could have a less outrageous explanation as well. New academic research...

Coming soon--a smarter factory: machine tool innovations bring new ways to optimize a competitive part-making strategy.(Emerging Technologies)
November 1, 2004... "SMART MACHINES ARE the next major step in the continuing quest for ever greater manufacturing productivity." That's Cincinnati Lamb's Richard A. Curless explaining participation in the Smart Machine initiative funded by the National...

SGI offers Linux for visualization.(Emerging Technologies)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... The Linux operating systems helps Silicon Graphics' Prism open a new level of visualization performance for a wide variety of industrial and scientific tasks. Intel's Itanium 2 processors are part of the architecture. Able to address...

Way too wired: a new study says 73% of senior executives qualify as e-BOOBs. Do you?(Brandt On Leadership)
November 1, 2004... YOU MAY BE SICKER THAN YOU THINK with a new and serious mental health syndrome afflicting executives across the country. To self-diagnose, ask yourself this question: Am I committed enough to career and company that, for the right business...

Appliance envy: from the factories to the stores, Whirlpool's Chinese operations reflect the company's global push to earn customer loyalty.(The China Challenge)(Cover Story)
November 1, 2004... THE AISLES OF THE YOLO ELECTRONICS and appliance outlet swirl with activity on a humid, 99 degree Saturday afternoon n Shanghai. Fans blow hot air, and young people jam the ground floor to check out the dazzling assortment of MP3 players and...

Manufacturers like us: labor costs aren't all that separate U.S. manufacturers from the top Chinese competitors. But a dozen or so time zones is a lot closer than you think.(The China Challenge)
November 1, 2004... AT LEAST SOMEONE IS GETTING THE MESSAGE. With quality a given, pundits have been proclaiming for several years now that "innovation" is the flag manufacturers must follow in their fight with low-cost global competitors. When IW asked Chinese...

The worrisome weight of Wallstreet: does the pressure from stock analysts for manufacturers to "make the numbers" hinder workforce development? Yes and no. But publicly traded or not, companies carrot afford to ignore investing in their employees.(The Workforce)
November 1, 2004... CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HOLDS THAT WALL STREET'S short-term emphasis on achieving ever-increasing quarterly earnings hinders the development of a truly skilled U.S. manufacturing workforce, with some people claiming that privately held companies do...

Rethinking training: new reporting could lessen the penalty Wall Street imposes for investing in people.(The Workforce)
November 1, 2004... PRESSURE FROM WALL STREET TO make their numbers combined with what she calls the "mistake" in accounting principles that treats investments in human capital as a cost and not an asset, produces a "perverse" outcome for public companies, says...

Small is beautiful: Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software is growing down-market as midsize--even small companies--seek the best way to optimize both the product and the process.(Information Technology)
November 1, 2004... WHY IS PLM SPREADING rapidly from its traditional roots of managing enterprise complexity, collaboration and integration for large manufacturing companies? Analysts and vendors have the obvious response: The convergence of growing...

Design intelligence addresses CAD disconnect: costly reiterations targeted.(Information Technology)(Computer Aided Design)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... THE PLM CONCEPT, AS IT emerges from its origins in aerospace, automotive and shipbuilding, carries challenges as well as opportunity. A growing challenge is CAD interoperability, a problem that grows as PLM extends design collaboration to...

Extending PLM's capabilities: search-and-retrieval software solves Weatherford's dilemma.(Information Technology)(Weatherford International Ltd.)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... MANAGEMENT'S ULTIMATE prize in the PLM quest is information access, a reward that grows as PLM transitions from vertical integration of departments to horizontal integration of the enterprise. Despite years of investing in enterprise...

Too young to vote: The manufacturers' of electronic voting machines have learned how slippery the path from paper to Ether can be.(Ecommentary)
November 1, 2004... WITH THE PAPER BALLOT FAST GOING the way of the woolly mammoth, this Presidential election year might be a good time to ask the question: Are e-voting machines and the manufacturers who make them ready for prime time? Following the 2000...

Sharing the wealth: GE Commercial Finance aims to lend customers more than simply money with its ACFC program.(Collaboration)
November 1, 2004... BERRY PLASTICS CORP. determined several years ago that its quality management systems needed improvement. While the Evansville, Ind.-based manufacturer of injection-molded packaging had four or five elements of a complete program, it was...

Calm ground, incentives sweeten deal: USEC Inc.'s uranium enrichment plant finds a home in Ohio.(USEC Inc.)
November 1, 2004... IT'S NOT OFTEN THAT SEISmic factors play a role in where a manufacturing plant is located, but that was the case with Bethesda, Md.-based USEC Inc.'s American Centrifuge uranium enrichment plant. The cities of Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah,...

RFID's ROI: benefits and costs still are being defined.(Energy)(Radio Frequency Identification)(Return On Investment)
November 1, 2004... WITHIN A FEW years, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags on pallets and products could be as ubiquitous as bar codes now are, providing the manufacturing supply chain with more production and distribution data. But even with a limited...

Crash, but don't burn: the road to process excellence and market success--and wisdom--is paved with failure.(Continuous Improvement)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... THINK ABOUT YOUR COMPANY OR BUSINESS unit's most recent, high-profile failure. The new product launched with great expense that riffled to interest many customers; the million-dollar piece of whiz-bang technology sitting idle in a corner of the...

Where did the $658 billion go? Don't blame the Bush tax cuts.(On The Economy)
November 1, 2004... THE FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT FOR THE fiscal year just completed was 3.6% of GDP. That is not the largest peacetime deficit ratio on record. That distinction goes to fiscal year 1983, when the deficit ratio was 6% of GDP. Nevertheless, during the...