October 11, 2008
				VirtualSite Solutions Helps Manage the Jobsite  Numerex Acquires Ublip  Keeping an Eye on the Road  Keeping It Convenient ALL OF TODAY'S HEADLINES       When compared to 2007, which best characterizes your company's plans for technology spending in 2008?       Our IT budget will remain the same in 2007 and 2008     We will decrease our IT budget in 2008     We will increase our IT budget in 2008     Vision for the Future As the demands of the manufacturing world continue to evolve and the lines between supplier, manufacturer, and customer continue to blur, we will... Table of Contents Is Your IP Safe? Walk down any major tourist avenue in New York City and you’re likely to be offered one. Thousands reside on vendors’ tables and line store shelves... Table of Contents Manufacturer of the Year: 2007 What does it take to be the Manufacturer of the Year? It certainly requires more than market share or name recognition, although those often come... Table of Contents
Hottest Companies 2008 What makes a company “hot” as opposed to “not so hot” or “not hot at all”? The short answer is probably: marketplace acceptance. Sometimes it is technology, sometimes something more intrinsic to... (More) Building an Automation Framework If you are driving on U.S. 12 along Canyon Ferry Lake just south of Helena, Mont., you might want to stop and check out the historical marker. On it you’ll find the memorialized words of prospectors... (More) Reducing Costs and Improving Supply-Chain Performance through B2B Outsourcing The benefits of B2B (business-to-business) outsourcing have been acknowledged and examined in a number of studies, but only some have attempted to quantify the technical and business benefits of... (More) Supply Chain Physics and Football A few years back, David Romer, an economics professor at University of California Berkeley, www.berkeley.edu, Berkeley, Calif., did a rather novel analysis of football performance using a Bellman... (More) M2M and the Future During my 20-plus years as a journalist I have had the pleasure to watch many industries rise and fall. I guess you could say during my tenure as a writer I have witnessed many markets contract... (More) Eyeing the Midmarket It is said that the midmarket is where the action is when it comes to enterprise applications. When I spent time talking to the five head honchos that are donning the cover of this magazine, I found... (More) U.S. Current-Account Deficit Up -  September 22, 2008 The U.S. current-account deficit increased in the second quarter of 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), www.bea.gov, Washington, D.C. The BEA says the deficit for the second quarter was $183.1 billion compared to $175.6 billion in the first quarter. (More)		3M Completes Sale of HighJump -  June 13, 2008 HighJump Software LLC, www.highjump.com, Eden Prairie, Minn., is now owned by Battery Ventures, www.battery.com, Waltham, Mass. Battery Ventures, a technology venture capital and private equity firm... (More) Streamlining the Design Process -  April 2, 2008 Merger and acquisition activity continues in the manufacturing IT (information technology) industry as SolidWorks Corp., www.solidworks.com, Concord, Mass., announced its purchase of Priware Ltd.... (More) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing The latest podcast in the Microsoft Series, with Peggy Smedley, editorial director of START-IT magazine and Sharon Ward, worldwide ERP and supply chain industry director of Microsoft, covers the factors increasing competition in manufacturing, including customer demands, mandates and regulation, and shorter product lifecycles. To hear more podcasts, please click here