Manufacturing Business Technology articles from September 2007

Manufacturing Business Technology archives from September 2007

Good forecasting tools point the way to lower inventories.
September 1, 2007... By Jean Thilmany, contributing editor For much of its existence, the Americas Beverage business unit of Cadbury Schweppes employed the common manufacturing industry practice of holding a certain amount of 'safety stock' to avoid being...

Data historian vendor faces an opportunity and a challenge: scaling to million-tag systems.
September 1, 2007... By Kevin Parker, editorial director (kparker@reedbusiness.com) Be on notice: the term data historian doesn't do justice to the pervasive role such systems are poised to play in today's most dynamic industries, nor does it hint at the big...

Small manufacturer finds QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions a better fit than ERP.
September 1, 2007... By Staff SVP Manufacturing , a Phoenix-based automotive accessories supplier, is a small enterprise. It has 25 employees in two locations, but recent growth prompted the company to move from a DOS-based accounting package to a full-blown...

High-profile recalls prompt a hard look at supply chain risk management tactics.
September 1, 2007... By Staff When an earthquake badly damaged the main production plant of Japanese piston ring manufacturer Rikon Corp. -a supplier to all eight of Japan's automakers-suspended production caused widespread customer disruption. Just days...

Life sciences sector uses PLM to shorten 'innovation-to-registration' cycle.
September 1, 2007... By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor (jimfulcher@comcast.net) Like so many other kinds of companies, medical device manufacturers are under pressure to innovate, says Todd Hein, senior director of life sciences for product life-cycle...

Can the 'L' in PLM stand for lean?
September 1, 2007... By William Atkinson, contributing editor (wjaa@midamer.net) Some manufacturers are finding that product life-cycle management (PLM) software can serve as platform for applying lean principles to the product development process. Jim...

We saw the value of the enterprise service bus a mile away.
September 1, 2007... By Sidney Hill, Jr., executive editor Anyone who fancies themselves a journalist relishes the thought of being first to uncover some major news, or spot a trend before it becomes a mass movement. That's why I smiled when I saw an...

Introducing business intelligence 2.0.
September 1, 2007... By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor Jim Honerkamp says there were many reasons for implementing business intelligence-or BI-systems at The Hillman Group , one of which was eliminating employee reliance on the IT department for critical...

ERP-Link business optimization platform drives SAP-Microsoft interoperability.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Two years ago, SAP and Microsoft saw an opportunity to ease interoperability between SAP's back-office applications and Microsoft Office, the most widely deployed set of productivity applications sitting on the desktop. The result...

Forecast accuracy, overstocks, and expediting comprise widespread inventory management pain points.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Given changing market forces, manufacturers and distributors apparently need a new inventory-management education, according to a new survey conducted by Cummaquid, Mass.-based Industry Directions . 'They're stuck in the 1970s...

Airplane components maker moves to digital archiving system for complex document management relief.
September 1, 2007... By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor (jimfulcher@comcast.net) Making components used for aircraft engines is a complex process with an equally complex behind-the-scenes menagerie of records to manage for FAA compliance. Electro-Methods...

SMB advisory: Use ERP to attack 'spreadsheet syndrome'.
September 1, 2007... By Dave Caruso You see it everywhere: companies running their entire businesses on spreadsheets. And nowhere is this more prevalent than in the small and midsize business (SMB) space. The gray market of e-mail- and spreadsheet-based...

The unified plant: from industry-specific ERP to Manufacturing 2.0.
September 1, 2007... By Roberto Michel, senior contributing editor Having a manufacturing system with a near-real time grasp of operations means a lot more to Carl Morris than measuring point efficiencies. For Morris, president of Injection Technology Corp....

Why buy plant software in a Lean environment?
September 1, 2007... By Julie Fraser Is this a contradiction? On the one hand, several recent studies by analyst firms-including mine-place plant operations software on the top of manufacturers' shopping lists. On the other hand, most companies are pursuing...

SaaS sure is popular, but it won't kill traditional applications.(Company overview)
September 1, 2007... By Tim Beyers, contributing editor When Boeing unveiled its first fully assembled 787 Dreamliner in July 2007-07-08-07 to be precise-CEO Jim McNerney proclaimed a revolution. 'Once every 10 years, Boeing and its partners come together...

Purisma appliances: a new approach to data governance.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Taking a different approach to master data management (MDM) and related data governance issues, start-up Purism a, asks, why not put all this into an appliance? 'Other [MDM] solutions force you to reengineer your systems to...

Wireless LANs bring newfound freedom, yet corporate databases at risk.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Businesses keep giving employees more and more wireless capabilities, but haven't freed their infrastructures from a wired network. According to Ontario-based Info-Tech Research Group , even in locations seemingly ideal for a...

Mobile software pulls in business system information in the language users know.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Field service remains notoriously constrained by paper-centric and manual processes. That's why mobile enterprise applications are the next competitive differentiator-especially for service repair situations-when a customer has a...

Ethernet networks-already the standard for office settings-move into the plant.
September 1, 2007... By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor (jimfulcher@comcast.net) The best approach to passing data between plant-level and enterprise systems-an issue manufacturers have wrestled with for years-could be to simply run a few extra feet of...

Pharmaceutical firms look to logistics providers, RFID to manage shipping of sensitive goods.
September 1, 2007... By Staff When it comes to complying with government regulations, pharmaceutical manufacturers have special needs. Shipping temperature-sensitive items, referred to as 'cold-chain' management, is a prime example. Canada, Ireland, China, and...

IT market shift: Choose your side and place your bet.
September 1, 2007... By Erik Keller The general consensus is the software market is in the middle of a massive shift. But there is no consensus as to the direction of that shift. Rather, there are two divergent views. One extreme espouses that the market...

Current trends in supply chain management.
September 1, 2007... By Kevin Parker, editorial director The Sterling Commerce Customer Connection 2007 event was dedicated-at least unofficially-to the proposition that 'you can't plan your way out of complexity.' This change in supply chain emphasis from...

Automation vendors address need to govern industrial wireless use of local radio spectrum.
September 1, 2007... By Kevin Parker, editorial director (kparker@reedbusiness.com) Given technology advances, emerging standards, and demand for affordable plant applications, in the last two years, major automation vendors have introduced products for...

Web-enabled technology makes fast work of trade regulation compliance.
September 1, 2007... By Carolyn Heinze (carolynheinze@free.fr) Despite more than five years of on-again/off-again negotiations, the major stumbling blocks to a global free-trade agreement are differences between developed nations-the U.S., Japan, and the...

HP studies the IT infrastructure library with Opsware buy.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Seeking to broaden its footprint and support for IT infrastructure libraries (ITIL), Hewlett-Packard (HP) is offering $1.6 billion to buy Opsware. Should the deal close, it would bring IT infrastructure change management and run...

Emerging PLM vendor ecosystems will tame user process complexity.
September 1, 2007... By Staff Product life-cycle management (PLM) adoption continues apace-even in some unexpected areas-as companies seek out collaborative, engineering-centric product development. Add to that the demand for expanded software integration and...

Rockwell Automation taps ICS Triplex for critical process strength.
September 1, 2007... By Staff The recent acquisition of ICS Triplex is testament to Rockwell Automation 's commitment to the process industries, and its grasp of the unique requirements for serving it well. ICS Triplex, a British company known for process...

IBM moves engineering VP to China as part of global focus.
September 1, 2007... By Staff By moving a top engineering executive in its supply chain organization to China, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM is looking to ensure high quality for components sourced there, and build closer ties to a booming market. The decision...