A few weeks ago, IDC released their annual predictions for the manufacturing sector in 2012. I recently attended two IDC webinars, one focusing on manufacturing trends in EMEA and the other discussing general technology trends across the sector. Now there weren’t too many surprises in terms of where manufacturers should invest their money this year, [...]
Read More» I have been a GXS blogger for four years now and during 2011 I posted nearly forty blog entries covering a range of B2B and manufacturing related topics. Over this time Google Analytics has provided me with some interesting feedback on which blog posts were being read the most, which key words were used to [...]
Read More» ‘Big Data’ has been highlighted as one of the key IT trends for the next few years, Terrabytes of data will need to be transferred across IT and B2B infrastructures of the future. But how can you achieve this seamlessly without impacting the performance of your company’s network and of course at the same time [...]
Read More» In previous blog entries I have often described the manufacturing industry as being truly global in nature. The industry has to work across different country borders, different languages, different time zones and customers expect their goods to be delivered on time irrespective of where a manufacturing company’s production facilities are based. One of the key [...]
Read More» The analyst firm IDC recently undertook a research study to get a better understanding of cloud computing adoption levels in the manufacturing industry. One of the major conclusions from the research was that manufacturers are looking at cloud computing as a key driver of IT productivity in the future. The study revealed that 22% of those surveyed [...]
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Last week I had the opportunity to moderate a live question and answer session with Kevin O’Marah of Gartner on the 2011 Top 25 Supply Chain list. We only had an hour for the webinar, but nonetheless were able to entertain over 10 questions from audience members at companies such as Siemens, Intel, Cisco, Raytheon, HP, [...]
Read More» In recent years manufacturers have globalised their operations due to the need to reduce costs and to explore business opportunities in new markets. Establishing a new manufacturing plant in a remote location has its problems, the most important of which is guaranteeing a reliable supply of parts from key suppliers and more importantly maintaining regular [...]
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Japan marches ahead as its citizens, families, businesses, economy and society start to emerge from disastrous, deadly and destructive impacts of the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. A uniquely Japanese institution that will also need to emerge from scathing and in my view unfair criticisms leveled on it in recent days is the Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing and inventory management [...]
Read More» Well first of all, Happy New Year ! Before starting a new set of blogs for 2011 I thought I would follow the lead set by my colleague Steve Keifer and do a quick review of my top ten ‘Driving B2B’ blogs of 2010. I think it is important to take stock once in a [...]
Read More» Last week, GXS introduced the fourth edition of our thought leadership portal, Insights. The theme for the site is Enhancing Customer-Centric Supply Chains, which was the subject of a study that we sponsored earlier this year with SCMWorld and Martin Christopher, Emeritus Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield University. The site includes not only the [...]
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