Prospects are very bright for manufacturing in the U.S., says Raj Batra, president of the industry automation division at Siemens. Batra, who believes that the U.S. now offers a high-end, innovation-oriented manufacturing environment, cites 30 months of consecutive increases in the PMI index and growth in plant capacity utilization as signs that a renaissance is under way.
As a culture of "bring your own device" takes hold in the business world, solutions providers face the challenge of ensuring that their applications work well on a variety of operating systems, says Mike Maris, senior director for transportation and logistics at Motorola Solutions.
The Supply Chain Risk Leadership Council was formed around 2005 by Cisco Systems Inc. It was created to bring together risk-management experts who could share best practices and bring process standardization to the way in which risks are identified in the global supply chain, according to John J. Brown, director of risk management with The Coca-Cola Co.
Optimizing transportation costs includes analyzing agreements, auditing invoices and assessing value-added processes, says John Haber, founder and CEO of Spend Management Experts. But it's also about identifying contract "gotchas" and "smoke-and-mirror" pricing.
AIOE was organized last year to bring together operations executives of consumer packaged goods companies in order to develop and share best practices in production operations, says Tom Egan, vice president of industry services at PMMI, which launched the Alliance.
In addition to professional programs, the Warehousing Education & Research Council now assesses members' processes so they know if they accord with industry best practices, says Michael Mikitka, CEO of WERC.
With sales of roughly half a billion dollars, Dorman Products is one of the world's leading manufacturers of automotive parts for the aftermarket, selling more than 100,000 distinct products. The company has experienced sharp growth over the past four years, says director of corporate forecasting Donald H. Mitchell. Recently, it saw the need to transform its demand-planning process, in order to create "a more transparent environment."
As business continued to grow at Darice, reportedly the country's largest full-line arts and crafts wholesaler and distributor, so did inefficiencies in its distribution system.
It's imperative today to build a pathway to agility in your enterprise, but how do you accomplish that? You can't be agile if you don't have control, says Dave Brooks, senior director, strategic business solutions, Software AG. And control comes with end-to-end visibility, not only in your company but in all levels of operations at each of your partners.
