Net Best Thing - October/November 2006

New and notable solutions for the supply chain in Order/Demand Capture, Product Lifecycle Management, Environmental Compliance; plus a review from the Executive Book Shelf

Order/Demand Capture:

Channel Commerce Management

Edge Dynamics (Redwood City, Calif.) provides channel commerce management solutions intended to enable manufacturers to optimize their order stream processing for addressing critical business challenges in the areas of channel control, regulatory compliance and — in the software company's initial target market of the life sciences industry — patient safety. Version 3.0 of the company's solution comes with more than 100 pre-built configurable reports and capabilities for ad hoc and trend analysis to anticipate evolving channel commerce dynamics, as well as pre-built integration scenarios for such specific SAP processes as order management. A continuous scorecarding solution is intended to help manufacturers more effectively manage channel agreements with 50-plus new scorecarding metrics for performance and compensation. More information: www.edgedynamics.com.

Product Lifecycle Management:

Design Lifecycle Management for Packaging

Belgium's Esko-Graphics has rolled out a Design Lifecycle Management Initiative in North America, offering a suite of software and hardware to streamline and accelerate the package-design and -production process. The solution is designed to augment the product design and manufacturing-oriented components of a product lifecycle management (PLM) suite with packaging design tools based around Esko-Graphic's Scope workflow products, as well as additional modules for managing the package supply chain. More information: www.esko-graphics.com.

Environmental Compliance:

New Tools Tackle RoHS, WEEE

Arrow Electronics has expanded its Component Information Services, an online toolset that provides engineering, procurement and supply chain professionals with data to help them research and select electronic components, adding a richer data set for compliance with environmental regulations issued by the European Union (EU), including the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives. Elsewhere, the recently released version 3.0 of Omnify Software's PLM product suite includes vendor part composition fields allowing unlimited vendor attributes, a feature that can help organizations required to meet RoHS and other environmental compliance regulations. Finally, Newark InOne has debuted a free Bill of Materials (BOM) Update Service to help components buyers comply with RoHS. Uploaded bills of materials are "scrubbed" against a product database of 4 million products to check for compliance, substitutes may be suggested and an update schedule can be set for BOMs to validate components as new RoHS-compliant parts come on the marketplace as the legislation's July 1, 2006, deadline approaches. More information: www.arrow.com, www.omnifysoft.com, www.newarkinone.com.

Executive Book Shelf:

Straight to the Bottom Line: An Executive's Roadmap to World Class Supply Management. By Robert Rudzki, Douglas Smock, Michael Katzorke and Shelley Stewart Jr. (J. Ross Publishing, 288 Pages, September 2005).

During the past 20 years, the procurement and supply chain profession has radically evolved, becoming a strategic business opportunity that can be fundamental to the success of any organization. A few leading companies have achieved an enormous competitive advantage by incorporating a procurement and supply chain strategy into their core corporate strategy. But many others haven't due to a lack of understanding at the senior executive level. With this book, the authors seek to explain this opportunity to all corporate executives and also to illustrate the leadership role that senior executives need to play. The heavyweight lineup of authors includes Rudzki, previously senior vice president and chief procurement officer at Bayer Corp. and CPO at Bethlehem Steel Corp., and currently president of Greybeard Advisors. Katzorke currently serves as vice president for supply chain management with Smiths Aerospace and previously was with Cessna Aircraft as senior vice president of supply chain management. Shelley Stewart, Jr. is vice president of supply chain at Tyco and formerly was senior vice president of supply chain management at Invensys. More information: www.straighttothebottomline.com.

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