Manufacturing Business Technology articles from December 2005

Manufacturing Business Technology archives from December 2005

High crimes and misdemeanors.(Up front)
December 1, 2005... Someone once said, "The open network is like the open society-crime thrives, but so does creativity." Leaving aside the network for the moment, in the U.S. today, nearly two million people are in prison. Some few are white-collar criminals...

Small manufacturers urge stronger action on China.(TRADE IMBALANCE)
December 1, 2005... "Tariffs" has become a dirty word in this free-trade era, but it's a word that at least one group isn't afraid to utter when it comes to trade with China. At a November policy conference held by the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC) in...

Calls increase for China intellectual-property enforcement.(CORPORATE)
December 1, 2005... The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) praised a recent announcement by the Office of the US. Trade Representative of a formal request to China for more data on intellectual property enforcement by the Chinese government under Article...

Technologies that keep on ticking: PLCs, thermal printers.(OPERATIONS)
December 1, 2005... Despite a world of change, certain technology products achieve workhorse status in manufacturing. Two such are programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and thermal printers. A report from ARC Advisory Group, Dedham, Mass., says heightened...

It's called "U.S. software patent lunacy".(INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY)
December 1, 2005... U.S. patents on software have been granted only since the early 1980s. The European Union (EU) recently ruled that no EU patents would be granted on software. Two events make software patents a compelling concern, says the Cutter...

Customer connectivity gains are evidenced in lean manufacturing deployments.(USING FEEDBACK)
December 1, 2005... Manufacturers in five nations ranked "defining customer needs" as the leading catalyst for innovation in their value chains, according to results of the third annum Productivity Survey conducted by Durham, N.C.-based TBM Consulting Group,...

Siemens plant summit reveals MES market framed in enterprise-related partnerships.(EXECUTION SYSTEMS)
December 1, 2005... Announcements made at Siemens Automation and Drives' European Plant SummiT included the "intention to deliver" with SAP an integrated business-plant system solution, and a partnership with Microsoft to open a manufacturing execution system...

Dell opens its largest advanced-production facility in North Carolina.(PLANT INNOVATION)
December 1, 2005... The cavernous production area remained silent--for the moment--but in the cafeteria of the new Dell Computer plant just outside Winston-Salem, N.C., more than 500 invitation-only guests were gathered for its Oct. 5 grand opening. The event...

Slimmed-down NMW show focuses on SMB sector.(NATIONAL MANUFACTURING WEEK)
December 1, 2005... National Manufacturing Week (NMW)--coming March 20-23, 2006--is relocating (for convenience's sake) from Chicago's McCormick Place to the Stephens Convention Center near O'Hare airport. The show also is returning to its roots as an exhibition...

Advances in laser scanning applied to supply chain bar coding.(MEMS TECHNOLOGY)
December 1, 2005... A giant advance in bar-code applications has been engineered via miniaturization of scanning engines based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology--i.e, a type of "systems on a chip" nanotechnology. The breakthrough offers big...

Open information & communication technologies road map leads to World Bank.(STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT)
December 1, 2005... Adoption of open technology standards on a global basis is essential to "unleashing newfound comparative advantage, invention, social development, and market opportunities," claims a report on information & communication technologies (ICT)...

Salesforce.com cites "open" improvements for apps exchange site.(CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT)
December 1, 2005... Hosted CRM vendor Salesforce.com says enhancements are in the works for its AppForce exchange for third-party applications. AppForce is a recent initiative to integrate applications or services through the Salesforce.com environment. The...

End-of-year IT budget checklist.(In perspective)
December 1, 2005... As we come up on a new year, it is time for all of us to review how we spend our money. Here are the top IT areas everyone should have looked at by now. Take inventory of IT assets. There is an old saying that you can't manage what you...

What manufacturers can teach IT.(In perspective)
December 1, 2005... The story should sound familiar. A highly protected sector of the economy grows complacent. Defects, costs, and cycle times mount. Capitalizing on the mistakes, new offshore competitors enter the market, and thanks to a dedication to quality,...

The fight over flexibility: Oracle's Fusion and SAP's NetWeaver initiatives pit vendors in quest for adaptable business processes.(Cover Story)
December 1, 2005... The battle lines are drawn in the market for enterprise software aimed at large and high-end midsize manufacturing enterprises. After a period of mergers & acquisitions, two big vendors remain: SAP and Oracle Corp. These multibillion-dollar...

Act of faith yields ROI: process design time reduced from 40 hours to four with product solution for midmarket.(Applications & Services)
December 1, 2005... A longtime user of Autodesk's AutoCAD 2D drafting software, York International's North American Refrigeration Division found itself in a situation familiar to many midsize manufacturers. In the summer of 2004--four years after upgrading to...

"It's all about the platform" as two Microsoft units merge.(REDMOND RESHUFFLE)
December 1, 2005... In late September, Microsoft announced a major reorganization that collapses its seven business units into three. For manufacturers, the eye-opening part was the integration of Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS)--now rebranded Microsoft...

Sales & operations planning for midsize--now only $240,000.(SOLUTIONS FOR PROCESS)
December 1, 2005... It's not that the supply chains of midsize manufacturers are any less complex than those of the largest enterprises, says Sujit Singh, a VP with Supply Chain Consultants (SCC). Rather, it's that manufacturers with revenues of less than $1...

Inventory liability--the scourge of supply chain management.(Response Management)(Advertisement)
December 1, 2005... Some things never seem to change in life. Excess inventory is one of them. In spite of all the investment in state-of-the-art demand and production planning systems, improvements in inventory management have been marginal at best. In fact,...

QuickBooks moves up a notch with latest release of business management software.(SMALL AND MIDSIZE MARKET)
December 1, 2005... How does a small manufacturer know it has become a midsize manufacturer? It's not a matter of revenue, or how many employees there are, says Bill Lucchini, general manager, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, a unit of Intuit. "It's based on...

Automotive OEMs and suppliers must become "fast fish" to survive.(DEMAND-DRIVEN MODELING)
December 1, 2005... Not only is the American automotive industry facing systemic problems--e.g., overcapacity, high legacy labor costs, and global competition, among others--but the industry landscape has evolved, and the ripples of the shift can be felt...

Rockwell aspires to be paramount aggregator of plant-floor data.(ANNALS OF AUTOMATION)
December 1, 2005... Rockwell Automation doesn't need to talk to its customers-although it no doubt does--to know that when it comes to information technology (IT), manufacturing plants remain "a highly fragmented space." The company is embarking on an ERP...

Rockwell Automation.
December 1, 2005... Rockwell Automation intends to buy Datasweep. a vendor of production management software solutions targeted at the pharmaceutical high-tech automotive, and reed-device then rebrand Datasweep Advantage software products into FactoryTalk....

Supply chain strategies can offset rising energy costs.(In perspective)
December 1, 2005... Energy prices have doubled over the past year, and 98 percent of manufacturers recently surveyed by Industry Directions feel the impact. In fact, as a result, top executives are paying more attention to supply chain issues at more than...

"Patent trolls" stalk this land: manufacturers must be aware of a new front in "tort reform" wars.(Business Performance)
December 1, 2005... For dedicated BlackBerry users, it was quite a scare. A stalemate in an ongoing patent violation lawsuit forced Ontario-based Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of the popular handheld device, to announce it might have to shut down its...

Analytics solutions catch C-level attention.(BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE)
December 1, 2005... Time was, senior management left the details of software purchases to the head of the IT department. But times have changed. Executives now know the power of business intelligence (BI) and analytics software, and its ability to enhance...

Oce brings metrics to document handling.(SIX SIGMA)
December 1, 2005... According to an August 2005 report from Framingham, Mass.-based IT market intelligence provider IBC, applying quality-control principles to document-printing processes can yield cost savings ranging from 8 percent to 41 percent. Unfortunately,...

OEM says test-data system reduces stress of working with contract manufacturers.(QUALITY CONTROL)
December 1, 2005... Terayon, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based modem manufacturer, recently discovered one pitfall of relying on contract manufacturers when customers started complaining that a particular unit wasn't consistently emitting ample power, even though it...

Providers and users alike admit to thorny outsourcing results.(OFFSHORING)
December 1, 2005... The IT outsourcing market is maturing, but with its growth comes dissatisfaction on the part of many. Poor performance scores are reflected in the doubling of the number of companies that have prematurely terminated outsourcing...

Outsourcing in China: interest takes a leap.
December 1, 2005... Growing interest in China as an outsourcing target was one of the most startling findings of Chicago-based DiamondCluster International's 2005 survey on outsourcing relationships, says Managing Partner Tom Weakland. "When we asked in 2004...

MatrixOne integration technology earns patent; supports business change.(PRODUCT LIFE-CYCLE MANAGEMENT)
December 1, 2005... A software tool aimed at streamlining deployment of its collaborative product life-cycle management (PLM) solution--regardless of user system architecture--earned MatrixOne a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in...

Pull-based system leads album maker to shut off MRP functionality.(LEAN MANUFACTURING)
December 1, 2005... Back in 1998, when Ole Dam was made operations manager of St. Cloud, Minn.-based Creative Memories--a direct-sales manufacturer of customized scrapbooks and photo albums--he knew exactly what to do. A lean practitioner for almost 25 years,...

It's more than a slogan: technology shifts, user requirements bring on-demand business model to life.(Integration & Infrastructure)
December 1, 2005... Call it an "on-demand business," as IBM does, or "the adaptive enterprise"--a Hewlett-Packard (HP) term--or whatever catch-phrase you like. The bottom line is, vendors' claims of being able to shape technology to fit the way a business works...

Demand for servers, storage, services grows at faster pace in process industries.(INFORMATION STORAGE)
December 1, 2005... Companies engaged in process manufacturing are buying servers, storage, and associated services at a much faster clip than their counterparts in discrete industries, according to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. As a whole, the U.S. server market...

Do manufacturers retain too little data, or too much?
December 1, 2005... While less affected than financial services and healthcare, manufacturers too are experiencing unprecedented information-storage pressures. "Although much depends on the nature of the business--and how data-intensive it is--it's unrealistic for...

EPCglobal releases road map for easy RFID data exchange.(E-COMMERCE STANDARDS)
December 1, 2005... The oft-cited vision of a global infrastructure that would allow companies to conduct electronic commerce without worrying about integrating systems or translating documents may be closer to reality with the recent release of a report outlining...

Ariba expects subscription model to broaden its customer base.(ON-DEMAND APPLICATIONS)
December 1, 2005... Studies of strategic sourcing generally produce the same conclusion: the practice yields substantial benefits-ranging from lower procurement costs to improved product quality-but developing a successful strategic sourcing program isn't easy....

Voltaire's InfiniBand-based Grid Backbone switching solutions will function as the high-performance interconnect for a Sun Microsystems supercomputer for computational scientific research at Japan's Tokyo Institute of Technology.
December 1, 2005... Voltaire's InfiniBand-based Grid Backbone switching solutions will function as the high-performance interconnect for a Sun Microsystems supercomputer for computational scientific research at Japan's Tokyo Institute of Technology. The...

Cross-platform ID management transforms IT infrastructure without replacing systems.(CASE-IN-POINT)
December 1, 2005... A change in management at RotaDyne also brought about a new attitude toward the use of IT. The world's largest manufacturer of rollers and related products for printing and other applications wanted to use IT as a competitive weapon. To...

Intellectual property security basics: some rules of thumb--and some technologies--that protect product information in outsourced environments.(Security/Wireless)
December 1, 2005... Manufacturing in low-cost countries makes great bottom-line sense. It even may be necessary for corporate survival. But doing so can put a company's most valuable asset--its intellectual property (IP)--at risk. Having operations or partnerships...

Collaboration Maturity Model points to best-practice solutions.
December 1, 2005... An Electronics Supply Chain Association (ESCA) survey, Regain Control to Manage Risk: Practices Must Catch up to Electronics Outsourced Model, indicates the outsourced business model (for electronics companies) results in poorer control and...

Prices are falling, but "large retailers" worry about impact on vendor viability.(RFID'S TIPPING POINT)
December 1, 2005... Prices of RFID devices continue to fall, but how far are they from a "tipping point" that could trigger mass adoption? While observers are in agreement as to the broad trend, opinions differ as to what constitutes the tipping point, when it...

Alternatives to password-protected access on the rise.(BEYOND USER IDS)
December 1, 2005... Dependence upon password protection for computer or network access control leaves companies vulnerable, yet it is the most common form of defense because it's familiar, simple to implement, perceived as inexpensive--and many IT departments...

CPG makers analyze RFID data for supply chain information.(APPLYING EPC)
December 1, 2005... Use of RFID technology to label and track inbound and outbound shipments is said to be the coming thing. But what's less a foregone conclusion--given the complexities of RFID, and the sheer volume of data-is how manufacturers would use RFID to...

Good hype versus bad hype (and how to tell the difference).(Back talk)
December 1, 2005... Hype is as much a part of the high-tech industry as semiconductors. The difference is, no one ever questions the intrinsic value of semiconductors while few will admit to seeing any value in hype. I believe there are times when hyping...

Manufacturing and the Microsoft infrastructure: manufacturing industry transformation addresses the realities of globalization.
December 1, 2005... In response to the challenges and opportunities associated with globalization, manufacturing industries are restructuring. One aspect of this transformation is that manufacturers--to increase competitiveness and improve customer...

The foundation for peak performance: Microsoft collaboration framework and partner solutions power demand-driven value chains.
December 1, 2005... Being a successful contract manufacturer takes engineering and production-management prowess. It also requires mastering the art of collaborating with value chain partners--the ability to understand all customer requirements and pass them along...

Desktop melds with the enterprise: SAP Mendocino, other efforts, merge worlds of office productivity, enterprise apps.
December 1, 2005... The world of personal productivity--dominated by the Microsoft Office System--is inseparable from the world of enterprise software. Bridging these two worlds has been difficult in the past. But today, vendors such as enterprise software giant...

Assemble a nimble value chain: more supply chain investment going toward consulting services.
December 1, 2005... Pressure to build supply chains that can respond to customer demand is driving higher investments in IT consulting services. Microsoft and its systems integrator (SI) partners see manufacturers using services to help install collaborative...

The lean supply chain: seating components manufacturer pilots Microsoft-based lean execution system.(Case-in-point)
December 1, 2005... For a growing number of manufacturers, lean manufacturing is a key strategy for value chain performance. While lean efforts closely examine factory-floor processes to "pull" work through plants at a pace triggered by demand, lean goes well...

Toward plug-and-play RFID: Microsoft readies RFID product; works with partners to simplify deployment.
December 1, 2005... Most manufacturing executives recognize the potential value of collecting data via RFID. But a lack of tools for transferring that data to core business systems--and making meaningful use of it once it's there--is slowing wide-spread adoption...

Today's warehouse is collaborative: for Schurman Fine Papers, WMS on Microsoft platform wraps up service, value chain benefits.(Case Study)
December 1, 2005... The primary goal of most warehouse management system (WMS) deployments revolves around the basics of order fulfillment: get goods shipped out on time, and handle warehouse tasks like picking and put-away efficiently. But when Fairfield,...

Execute without missing a beat: drum manufacturer Pearl rolls out Microsoft .NET-based WMS worldwide.(Case study)
December 1, 2005... When it comes to the drums made by Japan-based Pearl Musical Instrument Co., reliability is crucial, but so is technical innovation. The same could be said for the things Pearl was looking for in a warehouse management system (WMS) to execute...

Integrated responsiveness: bushings manufacturer OEMMCCO benefits from EDI interface, Microsoft Office 2003-based decision-support extensibility.(Case study)
December 1, 2005... Glen Wilson has an approach to supply chain communications that he says leads to greater responsiveness and fewer errors: "If you can get data from partners in a digital format, keep it that way and import it right into your systems," says...

Microsoft partner solutions for manufacturing.
December 1, 2005... Microsoft partner solutions for manufacturing Supplier SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISE/SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT eBots eBots integrates intra- and inter-business www.ebotsinc.com processes via a suite of...

Arrival of the real-time enterprise: aerospace supplier ACE Clearwater gains factory visibility, better reporting with .NET-based ERP.(Case study)
December 1, 2005... Just when did ERP systems evolve from being recording devices for transactions to real-time systems for supply chain management? For ACE Clearwater Enterprises, the shift took place when it deployed a new ERP system earlier this year. The...