Over the past few years GXS has sponsored a number of research studies conducted by prominent analyst and educational establishments. Our first study with Stanford University’s Global Supply Chain Management Forum was launched in 2007 and since then GXS has released studies discussing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), ERP/B2B Integration and Customer Centric Supply Chains. The latest study [...]
Read More» Today’s automotive industry can be broadly split into three categories of vehicle – budget, volume and premium. ‘Build to stock’ production for the volume car producers has been the mainstay of the industry for many years. However flat growth in Europe combined with increased consumer wealth in emerging markets is changing the face of global [...]
Read More» So it is that time of year again to highlight some of my more popular blogs from 2012. At GXS we use Google Analytics to provide insights into who is visiting our websites and what ‘keywords’ visitors are searching on. I have highlighted below the top ten most viewed entries from my blog during 2012, cloud computing [...]
Read More»
Large companies in the aerospace, automotive, high tech and industrial manufacturing sector purchase trillions of dollars of goods every year. Most of the purchases consist of raw materials, component parts or finished goods which they take into their manufacturing plants to create products. It would not be uncommon for a $5 billion manufacturing company to [...]
Read More» The adoption of cloud based B2B environments continues its relentless march around the world and the latest country to start deploying cloud solutions is Japan. The Japanese manufacturing industry has traditionally used behind the firewall based software solutions and many enterprise systems such as ERP platforms have been developed as bespoke platforms to meet the [...]
Read More» In an earlier blog I discussed how global supply chains had been severely disrupted in recent years. I also discussed how the role of the Business Continuity or Supply Chain Risk Manager is becoming increasingly important. But how many companies actually have a Business Continuity Manager or ’Master of Disaster’ within their business and what [...]
Read More» 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 [...]
Read More» 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 [...]
Read More»
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»
