Technology and the Global Supply Chain
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Automation 2.0
Yesterday the AMR team met with Rockwell Automation’s senior leadership group including CEO Keith Nosbusch to spend an entire day digging into the trends and challenges in today’s manufacturing automation market. Nosbusch is a graduate of University of Wisconsin’s electrical and computer engineering program, and a 35 year veteran of the automation industry. As the [...]
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Atoms or electrons: How does Hasbro make money?
The global supply chain reaches all the way from Rhode Island to China and back. Tonka trucks, GI Joe action figures and my Little Pony are all real products sold to real kids. People who obsess about “good manufacturing jobs” fret about how nothing is made in the USA anymore, and toys like these were among the [...]
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China and IP: the piper will get paid
As everyone knows, and as our quarterly supply chain risk data proves, China is a den of thieves as far as IP is concerned. Today’s New York Times has a lengthy and prominent article on brand piracy in Shenzhen’s cell phone industry. The practice of making and selling black market phones is so rampant that [...]
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Process Readiness: Are you ready to run a Marathon?
April 19 is Patriot’s Day in Boston. The reenactment of the Shot Heard Round the World on Lexington Green, the parades, the Red Sox—maybe I’ll pop over to Hopkinton and run the 26 miles of the Boston Marathon. I think not – I’ve never run more than three miles in my life!. The real marathoners [...]
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Next big land rush: believe it or not, is knowledge management
This sounds silly for anyone who has ever been involved in the typical hapless library exercise of a digital “knowledge management” initiative. The lasting image for most of these efforts is of a black hole - everything goes in, nothing comes out. But get ready for a change of tune.
The root of this is an [...] -
Sun and IBM Breaking Up: Who Wins?
The news today about IBM and Sun possibly going separate ways leaves a door open for others to dodge what could have been a pretty blockbuster combination. I remember back in late 90’s how cool Java was and what it meant for Sun. Unfortunately, the heavily engineer-driven culture at Sun kept what could have been [...]
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IBM and Sun: Is it about the hardware or the software?
The Wall Street Journal reports IBM is in acquisition talks with Sun Microsystems. At this point, the companies are refusing to comment on the rumor. If it comes to pass, the acquisition would give IBM a larger share of the high-end server and storage markets and enhanced access to certain customers, especially in the financial [...]
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Congratulations Marc… The next $billion will be harder
In 10 years, salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff has turned CRM-as-a-service into a $1B business with 55,400 customers. Both numbers are impressive. It took SAP more than 35 years and an acquisition of Business Objects to cross the 50,000 customer mark (BOBJ pushed them over 80,000).
Few application companies make it to the $1B mark. [...] -
Connecting the Spend Management Dots with Contracts
While not exactly a well-known name, Zycus continues its spend management expertise by rounding out its sourcing suite with Contract management. Targeted towards the sourcing and procurement professional, Zycus iContract provides organizations the ability to actualize negotiated contract savings through real-time monitoring, proactive alerting, and search capabilities. The product has intelligent tracking of contract compliance and [...]
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Microsoft Convergence 2009: Hybrid Technology
Hybrids are the buzz in the auto industry, and now hybrid applications may be the next buzz in technology, both in licensed, behind-the-firewall mode as well as developed and hosted in the cloud.
I spent time with Brad Wilson, GM of Microsoft’s Dynamic CRM team, and some executives from Avanade, Microsoft’s BPO/SI joint venture with Accenture. Microsoft [...]
