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In 1936, when John Tyson hauled his first truckload of chickens from Arkansas to Chicago for a profit of $235, he could not have imagined that a network of machines communicating silently via electrical signals would move poultry to market. Or that, just after the turn of the century, his
The attached diagram (in PDF format) illustrates how a company might synchronize supply and demand with its vendors and trading partners through the business-process model known as collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR). In this example, a 300-store, $1.4 billion sporting goods retailer wants to share its sales planning and
What’s in a name? Not much, apparently, for companies dabbling with Web applications on their corporate networks. Although Sun Microsystems has spent the past 18 months rechristening the bulk of its Web software suite under the banner of its Sun ONE brand, the marketing message has not made everyone a
In 1998, things were looking bleak for Corporate Express. The world’s largest business-to-business office products company had gotten that way through hundreds of acquisitions. It had taken on too much debt. In November of that year, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the company’s credit rating to junk. Monty Sooter, Corporate Express’
What are they?Computer networks that manage themselves; sometimes described as “self-managed” or “self-healing.” The term derives from the vertebrate nervous system, which controls involuntary functions like breathing and digestion. Who came up with them?Everyone, and no one. Researchers have been investigating autonomic computing for years. Compaq, Intel and Cisco, for
If you worked in Sigma-Aldrich’s customer service group three or four years ago, you performed some ugly gyrations to fill the orders of online shoppers. Like a lot of companies, Sigma-Aldrich—a supplier of chemicals to research laboratories—put up an electronic- commerce site in late 1998. At the time, the company
As the vice president of information systems for Toyota’s North American manufacturing operations, Jim Bolte spends his days figuring out how technology can be used to streamline operations—and thus manage costs—at a mass-production business that turns out more than a million new cars each year. In an interview with Baseline,
Schering-Plough, a $9.8 billion drugmaker best known for its Claritin allergy pills, is a chronic violator of Food and Drug Administration rules on making medicines. The company just paid $250 million to cover half of a $500 million settlement with the FDA. But it still has a lot of work
E-Markets Get Busy Signs of a World-Class Technology Group Home Security Software Piracy: Tracking the Thieves Customer Focus For a detailed view of this month’s statistics, download the PDF file.
The most recent fiscal three-month period just ended will be the second, third, fourth or even ninth consecutive money-losing quarter for some software vendors. Gartner Inc., the Stamford, Conn., research and consulting house, now estimates that 50% of today’s software companies won’t even be around by the end of 2004.