Shula Neuman
New research has confirmed the market’s link of suppliers and customers across industries. When good fortune smiles on a company, the stock market responds by valuing the firm more favorably. It’s well known that good news for one firm means other companies in the same industry will be affected as well. But according to new research from business professors at Washington University in St. Louis, The Ohio State University and University of Rochester, we can anticipate something else that isn’t as obvious: there’s also a predictable connection between news announcements of a company and its suppliers or customers.
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The mobile employee is opening new opportunities for mobile enterprise application (MEA) providers worldwide as they demand more solutions for a expanding set of needs. Research firm IDC has released a study reviewing the expanding need and booming market for mobile enterprise applications. According to the study, the mobile reached and IDC forecasts that the market will grow enterprise application market will grow from $1.2 billion in 2005 to $3.5 billion in 2010, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23%.
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Oracle customers worldwide can now extend the capabilities of Oracle’s existing Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) suite through the two new modules, Oracle Strategic Network Optimization and Oracle Production Scheduling. Through a long-awaited marriage of Oracle’s JD Edwards and PeopleSoft Supply Chain Planning suite with Oracle’s Supply Chain Management applications, manufacturing companies can now optimize supply and distribution networks, mitigate risk, maximize shop floor throughput and dramatically reduce supply chain costs.
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire/ — The Supply-Chain Council (SCC) has
added more speakers to its roster of high-level executives and supply-chain
experts who will attend the 2007 Supply-Chain Executive Retreat,
Globalization: Getting It Right!, to be held at the Boca Raton Resort &
Club, in Boca Raton, Fla., from Jan. 22-24, 2007. The event focuses on the
evolution of supply chain practices to effectively penetrate global
markets, build global organizations and drive global supply. (more…)

Written by CSCO Editors
Thursday, 05 October 2006

When it comes to taking a disciplined approach to reducing defects in manufacturing, many companies may say they are practicing Six Sigma, yet few are actually doing it as rigorously as they should be. That’s according to a new report from the Boston-based IT research firm Aberdeen Group, which also says that companies that fully implement Six Sigma produce on average 40 percent more savings than other companies, including those that say they are implementing Six Sigma.
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CSCO Staff
Thursday, 12 October 2006

Oct. 12, 2006 — Sales of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications are expected to grow an average of 10 percent over the next five years according to a report released this week by Boston-based research and analysis firm AMR Research. As has been the case in recent years in the ERP market, the category is dominated by two companies, SAP and Oracle, at least in terms of revenue share, and AMR Research is forecasting that this trend will continue in 2006. The report indicates that SAP captured 42 percent of the ERP market’s revenue share in 2005 and that the software company’s share will increase to 43 percent in 2006. Oracle comes in a distant second, but still commanded 20 percent of the ERP revenue share in 2005, with it too projected to grow its share even more in 2006, to 23 percent. After those two companies, there is a sharp dropoff in revenue market share captured by other ERP vendors. For example, the company with the third highest revenue share in 2005 was the Sage Group (6 percent), and AMR Research forecasts Sage’s share to decline slightly to 5 percent in 2006. Microsoft came in fourth, with 4 percent ERP market share in 2005 and projected 4 percent in 2006.

Around the year 2000, ERP in general was considered by most analysts as offering substandard supply chain capabilities for managing such activities as complex warehouse management, order management, advanced planning, and more. The ERP concept originally came up through the manufacturing world, and many ERP packages were initially focused on financials with human resources, and basic (infinite, not capacity-based/finite) planning and scheduling and warehouse management. But since then, most ERP companies have improved their supply chain functionality, with some extending their reach into manufacturing execution, Customer Relationship Management, Web portals, and more. That meant the ERP vendors started encroaching into the domain of so-called Best of Breed supply chain software vendors such as Manhattan Associates, EXE, Provia Software, and others. “The integrated versus best-of-breed debate still goes on in some organizations, but the [ERP] suite advocates are clearly winning,” says Jim Shepherd, senior vice president of research at AMR Research.

Indeed, a report issued last month by AMR Research about the supply chain management application market shows that SAP was the top SCM (Supply Chain Management, which includes warehouse, transportation, network design, inventory control, and more) vendor in terms of revenue, with 12 percent of the market in 2005. Oracle was second in 2005 SCM revenue share with 10 percent, followed by i2 Technologies with 5 percent, Manhattan Associates with 4 percent, and infor with 3 percent.

ERP sales are also benefiting from a widespread acceptance of the idea that businesses must have integrated information systems to be competitive, and the most effective way to satisfy this need is to purchase an ERP package that features broad functionality and pre-built integration. AMR Research forecasts that the global ERP market revenue will reach $29 billion in 2006.

By Dai Yan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-11-16 08:47
The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games are expected to promote China’s road transportation, especially special vehicle transport.

After the successful bid for the Olympic Games, Beijing decided to launch an investment of 180 billion yuan (US$23 billion) in 142 projects on city infrastructure, including subway, light rail, expressway, airport and stadium. These projects have created a great demand in Beijing for special transport vehicles such as self-dumping vehicles, concrete mixers, bulk cement trucks, emergency vehicles, sweepers and fire-fighting vehicles.
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Does your supply chain strategy include Mexico? It should!
By Al Brown, president of SupplyMex
Purchasing November 16, 2006

Mexico’s position as a world-class manufacturer of moderate to high value-added goods continues to strengthen. Mexico offers a strategic competitive advantage over other Low Cost Countries in the world. It shares a 2,000 mile border with the U.S., offers a highly developed logistics infrastructure that facilitates global trade, has 12 free trade agreements with 42 countries, a stable currency and economy, a healthy climate for investment and a strong competitive labor force. These factors make Mexico a logical choice for sourcing and OEM outsourcing supply chain strategies.
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Takes supply chain execution solution leadership position in EMEA; announced as finalist for Best IT Supply Chain Solution in China

RedPrairie Corporation, the world’s leading consumer-driven optimization company, announced today that it has taken a leadership position in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and is a finalist for the Best IT Supply Chain Solution in China award by the China Supply Chain Council. (more…)

It wasn’t an awe-inspiring showing of strength, but the market for supply chain management (SCM) applications experienced 3-percent growth in 2005, achieving a total value of $5.6bn, according to AMR Research Inc. The sector was influenced by a variety of factors, including globalization, leaner supply networks, higher customer expectations, mass customization at the manufacturing and assembly level, and rising demand for product and service variability. “New business focuses and pressures are driving pockets of vendor information and renewed corporate spending in supply chain initiatives,” according to Mark Hillman, a senior research analyst at AMR. On the negative side, “spending is tempered by the fact that corporate supply chain organizational maturity is still relatively low, limiting adoption. In addition, consolidation will continue to play a significant role in 2006.”

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Deb Navas, Editor at Large,
Supply Chain Manufacturing & Logistics

The increasingly global nature of consumer packaged goods manufacturing has had an impact on every supply chain link, especially the one that gets goods to market.

WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE that integrates with material handling equipment speeds fulfillment in complex, high-volume, retail distribution environments.

Roles are blurring in the retail, wholesaler, and distributor supply chain arena, and the definition of what the “distributor” now does is not so easily defined. Big retail operations—Wal-Mart naturally springs to mind—primarily use their own distribution networks, though they also use wholesale distributors.
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LONDON, November 15 /PRNewswire/ — The increasing need to prevent sales of counterfeit medicines and avoid stock outs of drugs has created a compelling need for effective IT solutions to rationalise pharmaceutical distribution channels across Europe. With comprehensive support from information technology (IT) across distribution channels, the European pharmaceutical industry will experience robust growth.
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