Mr. McDowell was also Vice President of Logistics for TruServ Corporation, and consolidated the nationwide logistics networks of TruValue Hardware and ServiStar/Coast-to-Coast Hardware following the merger of those two companies.

Previously, Mr. McDowell was president and founder of The Saddleback Strategy Group, where he served as a senior advisor to small and medium size businesses. Previously he was Executive Vice President of Logistics for Apria Healthcare Group, where he was responsible for 16 regional distribution centers; and Vice President of Distribution Services for the wholesale food distributor Bozzuto’s Inc., where he streamlined a routing and dispatching system involving 140 drivers and 450 warehouse associates.

CryoPort (www.cryoport.com) has developed a leading edge, proprietary, technology-driven packaging and transport system focused on providing a solution for the frozen shipping market in the growing global life science industry. The products developed by CryoPort are essential components of the infrastructure required for the testing, research and end user delivery of temperature-sensitive medicines and biomaterials in an increasingly complex logistical environment.

The conference theme, The Seamless Supply Chain: The managerial culture and technical tools that make for high-quality, high-productivity manufacturing, spotlights factory floor coordination and communication not only in state-of-the-art technology, but also state-of-the-art planning and organizational ideas.

Automotive News Manufacturing Conference presentations kick off with individual morning remarks by:

- William G. Diehl, President, CEO & Global Automotive Practice Lead, BBK
- Ron Harbour, President, Harbour Consulting
- John G. Kalson, Director of Production, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama
- Bill Krueger, Senior Vice President North American Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management (effective 4/1), Nissan North America Inc.

Sharing insights during an afternoon panel discussion around the theme Moving Parts: Achieving perfection in supply chain management will be:

- Doug Bartow, Vice President Paint, BMW Manufacturing Corporation LLC
- Chris Nielsen, Vice President of Purchasing, Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc.
- Vicki O’Meara, President, U.S. Supply Chain Solutions, Ryder System, Inc.
- Sanjiv Sidhu, Founder & Chairman, i2 Technologies, Inc.
- Frederiek Toney, Executive Director, Material Planning & Logistics, Ford Motor Company

Bo I. Andersson, Vice President, Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, General Motors will address the conference during the dinner program. The evening will also include the first-time presentation of the Automotive News Supplier’s Choice Awards. Based on results of a survey conducted by J.D. Power and Associates, the awards recognize original equipment manufacturers that best encourage, solicit, implement and reward suppliers’ innovations as part of their total business plan.

Rounding out the conference’s agenda are VIP tours of Nissan’s Smyrna Manufacturing Plant.

The 2007 Automotive News Manufacturing Conference is expected to attract 300 – 350 OEM and supplier executives involved in manufacturing, purchasing, logistics, information systems, technology and engineering.

Registration for the Automotive News Manufacturing Conference is $995 per person. Dinner-only tickets, including the pre-dinner reception, are available for $185 per person or $1,850 for a table of ten. Visit http://www.autonews.com/manufacturing for a complete agenda and online registration or call 313-446 0326.

The Automotive News Manufacturing Conference is also sponsored by Automotive Research Alliance, Brose, Nissan, BBK, Covisint, i2, State of Kentucky and the Tennessee Automotive Manufacturers Association.

The new journal, titled CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly, will be a paid-circulation publication and web site and will harness the collective resources of CSCMP, the preeminent association for individuals involved in supply chain management, and AGiLE, publisher of such market-leading print and electronic brands as DC Velocity and RFIDWatch.

The new publication will bring to the market its highest-value vehicle for delivering the most current, must-have business information for supply chain executives worldwide.

Existing CSCMP members, approximately 9,000 strong, will receive a subscription to CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly as part of their annual membership dues. Additional circulation will be developed across a global audience.

AGiLE Business Media, LLC brings unparalleled staff experience and expertise to the new joint publishing alliance. “Once we knew we wanted to move forward with this initiative,” added Blasgen, “it became clear from the input we received that there was simply no better publishing team with which to partner.”

Founded in 2002, AGiLE has enjoyed tremendous success in a competitive publishing environment. Its initial brand, DC Velocity, was named one of the nation’s Top 10 Business Publications in its first year, and has gone on to establish itself as the best-read logistics publication in the market.

Several members of the core team at AGiLE who are responsible for the success of DC Velocity will also lead the development and launch of CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly. Among its members is Mitch Mac Donald, president and CEO of AGiLE and editorial director of DC Velocity.

CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly will debut in summer 2007.

Mark R. Holden, President and CEO stated, “With this agreement, the Company is well underway toward achieving our primary goal of being the “employer of choice” in the local community and positions ACL to recruit and retain the most qualified employees. The agreement is the result of a remarkable cooperative effort to negotiate a contract that benefits both employees and the Company. We wish to thank Fred Zuckerman, President, Teamsters Local 89 and the Bargaining Committee for helping us position the shipyard for future growth.”

Mr. Zuckerman commented, “We have reached an agreement that recognizes our members’ valuable and dedicated service to the company. We appreciate management’s new approach to labor relations and look forward to a prosperous relationship with Jeffboat.”

American Commercial Lines Inc., headquartered in Jeffersonville, Indiana, is an integrated marine transportation and service company operating in the United States Jones Act trades, with approximately 2,750 employees and revenues of more than $940 million as of December 31, 2006. For more information about ACL generally, visit www.aclines.com.

The new Lawson applications will replace Sweetwater’s legacy human resource system, which required inefficient, paper-based processes. With Lawson Human Capital Management, Sweetwater will be able to create automated workflows to help streamline key HR processes, such as hiring and processing new employees. The new Lawson system also will enable the district to deploy employee self-service access to basic HR information, increase employee productivity by eliminating duplicate data entry, and reduce staff overtime costs.

The district will integrate the new Lawson applications with several other third-party business systems, including the Chancery Student Management System and the San Diego County Office of Education.

Lawson Professional Services will provide implementation services for the district’s system rollout, which Sweetwater expects to complete by March 2008.

Lawson serves more than 120 public services customers, including three of the top seven digital state governments and four of the 25 largest school districts in the United States. State governments, cities, counties, school districts, publicly owned utilities/authorities and special districts rely on Lawson’s solutions to help meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders – constituents, employees, students, vendors and the community – while helping to maximize limited budgets.

About Lawson Software
Lawson Software provides software and service solutions to 4,000 customers in manufacturing, distribution, maintenance and service sector industries across 40 countries. Lawson’s solutions include Enterprise Performance Management, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Manufacturing Resource Planning, Enterprise Asset Management and industry-tailored applications. Lawson solutions assist customers in simplifying their businesses or organizations by helping them streamline processes, reduce costs and enhance business or operational performance. Lawson is headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., and has offices around the world. Visit Lawson online at www.lawson.com.

“We’ve seen customer adoption grow tenfold in the last year, with more companies using SupplyScape than all other solutions combined,” said Shabbir Dahod, CEO of SupplyScape. “Our customers are experiencing the network effects of our supply chain transformation vision. Companies that have adopted the technology are now realizing the potential to achieve better supply chain efficiency and lower the cost of doing business, and they’re also realizing new revenue opportunities with a broadening network of trading partners.”

Over 200 million drug bottles have electronic pedigrees already, and the pace is expected to accelerate with this week’s ratification of the EPCglobal Drug Pedigree Standard. Additionally, in just the past 12 months, over 3.5 million drug authentications occurred across the Pharma supply chain through the SupplyScape RxAuthentication Service, the industry’s first EPC authentication service utilizing EPCIS with network-wide business applications.

Transforming the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain into a Value Network
At a time when the pharmaceutical supply chain is undergoing dramatic change, SupplyScape is helping to catalyze the industry’s movement toward more efficient value networks. This vision is attracting interest in every segment of drug distribution – pharmaceutical and biotech companies, distributors, 3PLs, and pharmacies.

“In 2007 we expect to see expanded industry adoption of transformational supply chain technologies throughout the Pharma value chain, as companies increase focus on synchronizing the physical product flows with their related information flows and financial transactions,” said Eric Newmark, Senior Research Analyst, Health Industry Insights (an IDC company). “These value- oriented solutions enable companies to drive revenue growth, minimize costs and realize maximum ROI through the network effects of supply chain transformation.”

As more companies orchestrate supply chain operations through serialization, authentication, and pedigree programs, everyone across the Pharma value chain benefits from this foundation for information access, network visibility, and trading partner synchronization. Originally adopted for patient safety and product security, these business solutions provide a revolutionary ability to improve availability, reduce supply cost, and enhance financial transaction reconciliation.

“We find companies are no longer satisfied with the status quo of tactical RFID pilots,” said Robin Koh, chief strategy officer at SupplyScape. “Instead, customers seek significant business benefits through transformational solutions, and we see increased emphasis on building efficient, responsive, and secure value networks, today. Our customers tell us that they’re now able to gain far more visibility into their trading partner networks than they had before.”

Some of the most transformational initiatives are a result of strategy engagements spearheaded by SupplyScape supply chain experts, including Koh and other value network strategists who formerly led business applications and ROI analysis at the MIT Auto-ID Center. The SupplyScape strategy consulting team works with the largest biotech and pharmaceutical companies and retail chains to define the ROI blueprint for their serialization, patient safety and supply chain optimization programs.

“The benefits are numerous and tangible when these business blueprints are linked to top-line corporate strategies.” added Koh. “Serialization and product identity down to the item level enable visibility and control of product movement. Synchronization between demand signals and supply responses results in cost-effective inventory availability, improved product launch potential, and the ability to respond immediately to unanticipated market events and opportunities. In addition, rapid and precise financial reconciliations offers the opportunity to drive down the cost of healthcare while maximizing revenue streams for trading partners across the supply network,” added Koh.

About SupplyScape
SupplyScape Corporation is a leading provider of supply chain software and expertise to drive maximum security and value in the pharmaceutical supply chain. A pioneer in defining both the open universal EPCglobal-standards-based pedigree solution and the EPC authentication service for the pharmaceutical industry, SupplyScape provides market-leading authentication, ePedigree, trading partner integrity, and certificate authority services and solutions that efficiently support the diverse operational environments spanning the entire pharmaceutical value chain. The company’s solutions enable pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, wholesalers, distributors, and pharmacies to maximize patient safety and product revenue throughout the pharmaceutical and biotechnology value chains. For more information, visit www.supplyscape.com.

The IBF webcast “Remy International Jump Starts Inventory Management” will be held on Jan. 17 at 1:00 p.m. EST and will focus on how companies can improve forecast accuracy and reduce excess inventory. Steve Brown, director of supply chain, Remy International, will discuss how Remy created a one- number plan to improve forecast accuracy of both sales and reverse logistics, and significantly reduce inventory.

Webcast participants will also learn how Remy deployed Logility Voyager Solutions(TM) and:
— Reduced finished goods inventory by more than 30%
— Improved service level from 97.8% to 99.6%
— Achieved core returns forecast error of less than 5%
— Established a formal Sales and Operations Planning process

Logility Voyager Solutions is a complete supply chain management solution that features performance monitoring capabilities in a single Internet-based framework and provides supply chain visibility; demand, inventory and replenishment planning; supply and global sourcing optimization; manufacturing planning and scheduling; transportation planning and management; and warehouse management.

For more information and to register for the webcast, visit www.ibf.org .

About the Institute of Business Forecasting (IBF)
The Institute of Business Forecasting (IBF) is recognized worldwide as a full-service provider of forecasting, demand planning, supply chain research and education. In addition to its webinars and onsite events, the IBF provides a certification program that offers two designations, Certified Professional Forecaster (CPF) and Advanced Certified Professional Forecaster (ACPF). The organization calls many of the world’s largest companies as its members. The IBF publishes the Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF) as well. This is a publication geared towards practitioners in the field. With its vast array of educational information, the IBF can help you improve forecasting performance, and consequently, your bottom line.

About Logility
With more than 1,100 customers worldwide, Logility is a leading provider of collaborative, best-of-breed supply chain solutions that help small, medium, large and Fortune 1000 companies realize substantial bottom-line results in record time. Logility Voyager Solutions is a complete supply chain management solution that features performance monitoring capabilities in a single Internet-based framework and provides supply chain visibility; demand, inventory and replenishment planning; supply and global sourcing optimization; manufacturing planning and scheduling; transportation planning and management; and warehouse management. Logility customers include Bissell, Brown Shoe Company, Huhtamaki UK, McCain Foods, Pernod Ricard, Rand McNally, Sigma Aldrich, and VF Corporation. Logility is a majority owned subsidiary of American Software (NASDAQ:AMSWA) . For more information about Logility, call 1-800-762-5207 or visit http://www.logility.com/.

“Our research found that organizations are striving towards more accurate and comprehensive information on which to base their important business decisions. The research shows businesses are ready to transform into information driven organizations in 2007 and beyond through advanced use of technology.” said Mark Smith, CEO and EVP of Research at Ventana Research.

Among the key research findings, Ventana Research found:
· Information management is just beginning to mature. Nearly two-thirds of organizations (66%) are still in the early stages of information management maturity, with the large majority of organizations built on entry-level technologies such as data warehousing and business intelligence (BI).
· Data governance is not widespread but is rated a high priority. More than half of respondents reported that their organizations do not publish a formal data governance policy but those that do tend to be large companies.
· Broad diversification of Information Management is underway. While our research found a heavy existing focus on BI, data warehousing, data quality and data integration, there is a significant diversification underway with new projects in progress or planned in enterprise master data management, enterprise search, information security, enterprise information integration, and data governance.
· Customer information is the most important but followed by financial then product information assets. Customer information holds the highest priority among the information assets of companies, according to survey respondents. Over 50 percent of organizations ranked
customer information first followed by financial information with 36 percent.

Ventana Research will expand on the key findings of the research study Information Management Actions, Intentions, Perceptions and Trends in Information at a live interactive webinar on Tuesday, December 5 at 9:00am Pacific.

More information on the webinar and the study can be found at www.ventanaresearch.com.

IDC’s top ten predictions for Infrastructure Software are:

1. The next wave in virtualization emerges, which IDC calls Virtualization 2.0. Users will focus on continuity, disaster recovery, and high availability.

2. Software appliances will become a household word in 2007. The convergence of virtual machine technology and a new initiative by several tool vendors is giving birth to this new form of software packaging.

3. The use of Linux paravirtualization will be mostly sizzle – not steak. Few users are going to substitute their current kernel with a paravirtualized kernel.

4. Management of virtual infrastructure takes center stage at large enterprises, extending adoption of virtualization across test, development, and production.

5. Virtualization and security will become stronger focal points for ITIL/ITSM vendors, who will do more to add support for virtualization and managing virtual environments to their service management offerings.

6. Major system management vendors will accelerate “productization” of ITIL best practices by incorporating functional software components with automated workflows that implement service delivery and service support processes.

7. Leading system management vendors will start putting a vertical focus to their ITIL marketing and product developments. These vertical segments will include Financial Services, Health Care, and Manufacturing.

8. There will be “growth separation” between software vendors that have made major acquisitions. Vendors must develop and execute sales and marketing strategies for combined entities that differentiate and clarify product offerings.

9. Microsoft’s client operating system anti-piracy efforts will backfire. Microsoft’s anti-piracy campaign will drive customers toward Linux.

10. Our expectations remain consistent that Windows Vista in 2007 will not uplift the operating system or PC market spend dramatically, but we are predicting a meaningful shift of adoption favoring premium Windows Vista SKUs.

More information about IDC’s Predictions for 2007 is available at www.idc.com.

For illustration, consider manufacturer Intel, and one of its major customers for computer chips, Dell Inc. One might observe information externalities affecting Intel when Dell makes its earnings announcements. Analysts who follow Dell probably ask questions about why the company reported lower operating income than expected. But other analysts-who don’t follow Dell-would still listen carefully because they want to pick up clues about what Dell’s news means to the companies they do follow.

What’s remarkable isn’t that humans can intuit these connections, but that the market behaves in a way that takes into account these finer relationships. Continuing the example, Zach said, consider what could happen to Intel after Dell makes its earnings statement.

“The supplier, in this case Intel, is likely to be affected when the customer announces increased revenues or decreased operating income. What’s more, the tighter the economic bond between customer and supplier, the stronger the impact,” Zach said. “Dell accounted for approximately 19 percent of Intel’s sales in 2005. If more people bought Dell computers in a given year, then Intel is going to benefit as well because Intel produces the chips for Dell’s computers.”
Not all announcements are good news, however.

“Consider the costs of the customer,” Zach said. “If Dell announces its costs have gone up, that’s obviously bad news for Dell. But it’s not necessarily bad news for Intel. Dell’s costs might have gone up because Intel was able to raise its prices. This could be a positive signal for Intel’s shareholders.”

Zach’s research examines various types of accounting announcements and evaluates whether the information-transfer flows consistently depending on the kind of news. In particular, Zach looked at earnings reports, management forecasts and conference calls—whether those calls are related to earnings or not.

Investors aren’t the only ones that can benefit from understanding the connection of supplier and customer through what Zach calls “information externalities.” If there is a lot of competition in a supplier’s industry, then any relationship the supplier has with a major customer is going to be affected by announcements of the company’s well being.

More information on the study, co-written by Zach with accounting professor Shail Pandit at The Ohio State University and Charles Wasley, professor of business administration at the University of Rochester on the study is available through www.wustl.edu.

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