Manufacturing Business Technology articles from March 2009

Manufacturing Business Technology archives from March 2009

Bill Polk: Tremendous opportunity ahead in automation software.
March 1, 2009... Bill Polk In my last column I cited reasons why U.S. manufacturers should be looking to our own shores when analyzing their value chain networks. Some of them included currency fluctuations, fuel volatility, and supply chain risk...

Julie Fraser: S&OP matures into strategic process.
March 1, 2009... Julie Fraser In tough times, everyone must pull together. Fortunately, companies have been learning to do that for a while. In the past five years, sales & operations planning (S&OP) has become a more common process for manufacturing...

Cindy Jutras: What gets measured does get managed.
March 1, 2009... Cindy Jutras The primary business drivers impacting ERP strategies have been--and probably always will be--growth, customer service, and cost reduction. In the past, growth and customer service jockeyed for position at the top of the list,...

Skillfully social.
March 1, 2009... By Hope Neal, Contributing Editor Companies embrace wikis, blogs, collaboration tools found on the lofty Web 2.0 landscape In January, PTC , a supplier of product life-cycle management (PLM) software, released Windchill ProductPoint,...

Lighten up.
March 1, 2009... Roberto Michel, Senior Contributing Editor Recessionary times call for business intelligence-based insight to lean supply chain performance Maintaining a lean supply chain during flush economic times isn't exactly easy, but staying...

Unified communications: Microsoft pushes forward with its collaboration vision.
March 1, 2009... Hope Neal, Contributing Editor (hope@ontargetcomm.com) Having access to Web conferencing and instant messaging to collaborate with colleagues, supply chain partners, and customers is a good thing. But doesn't it make more sense to...

Best-of-breed supply chain vendor thrives by tackling specific customer needs.
March 1, 2009... Malcolm Wheatley, Senior Contributing Editor (malcolm_wheatley@compuserve.com) Manufacturers rarely have trouble finding supply chain planning and scheduling applications--many are embedded in ERP suites. What's trickier is finding a...

Double shot and score: Link your advanced control systems to predictive models to improve plant yield, profitability.
March 1, 2009... Malcolm Wheatley, Senior Contributing Editor Built in 2005, East Kansas Agri Energy 's ethanol plant in Garnett, Kan., was designed to produce ethanol from locally grown corn. But soon after the plant was first commissioned--with demand for...

Revved-up innovation: PLM platform speeds development of aftermarket auto power boosters.
March 1, 2009... Sidney Hill, Jr., Executive Editor (shill@reedbusiness.com) For Edge Products , getting new designs to market quickly is a basic business requirement. Since its inception, this Salt Lake City-based company has been on the cutting edge when...

Sidney Hill, Jr.: Let's fix our economic state of mind.
March 1, 2009... Sidney Hill, Jr., Executive Editor These are tough times to be in manufacturing. All of the factors contributing to the current global recession have fallen right on top of this sector. The tightening of credit and consumers' fear of...