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Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is one of the best known examples of a company that has achieved operational excellence thanks to its supply chain efficiencies. Less well known, though, [...]

This article is adapted from material appearing in the book Supply Chain Management Best Practices, Second Edition by David Blanchard (2010, John Wiley & Sons) and is used with permission. [...]

About a year ago, Cogensys, a privately-held expert system tool vendor for financial applications, was acquired by Cybertek, a publicly-traded life insurance software company (see ISR, April 1991). Since last [...]

AI technologies -- notably natural language, voice recognition and text retrieval -- are playing an important role in bringing multimedia applications to the mainstream. An up-and-coming trend in intelligent computing, [...]

Launching the first new trend in intelligent systems for 1992, IntelliCorp Inc. (Mountain View, CA), a vendor of Lisp- and C-based expert system development tools, and James Martin & Co. [...]

Mainstream applications of fuzzy logic continue to find their way into the US, usually hidden in consumer products made by Japanese companies. The 1992 Mazda 929 sedan, from Mazda Motor [...]

Warren Buffett caused a lot of head-scratching when he agreed to purchase Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNSF), the biggest railroad in the United States, for $26.3 billion. His company, [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Changing suppliers is never easy, being both costly and time-consuming. Nevertheless, when you're a small manufacturer, without the influence and purchasing power of larger companies, supply chain management […]

The logistics industry took a particularly hard hit over the past year, according to the 2009 State of Logistics Report, released by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). […]

How's this for a perfect storm? Thanks to the recession and 2008's fuel price spikes, companies are reacting by repositioning their logistics locations closer to their end users, but they're […]

> Do's Establish closer collaborative relations with distribution channels. Get closer to the demand signal and sense variations continuously. Use sell-through demand (rather than sell-in demand) from sales channels to […]

Not surprisingly, the major influence on companies' supply chain agenda in 2009 is the economic crisis, according to Capgemini Consulting's recent study of 300 global supply chain managers. reducing inventory […]

The idea of "green" supply chains is taking a backseat to "staying in the black" supply chains, at least in the current economic malaise. Based on the results of a […]

"Doing more Dwith less" is standard operating procedure in most warehouses these days, as companies are being challenged to support increasing volumes of products (often due to channel consolidation) without […]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Improving operational efficiency is the main objective for corporate IT departments as they seek to get through the recession, according to a survey of more than 300 IT […]

Who's Buying Supply chain Solutions? Supply chain management license (and alternate revenue) share by geographic region, 2007 North America 58% Europe 30% Latin America 2% rest of world 2% Asia-Pacific […]

The early returns on the manufacturing industry's adoption of green initiatives is still pretty spotty. While the majority of those companies surveyed by EyeForTransport indicate an awareness of the need […]

A statewide food traceability initiative based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been launched throughout the Hawaiian islands. The Hawaii Produce Traceability initiative, a three-year pilot program, will provide […]

What a way to start the new year. According to the Institute for Supply Management's index of manufacturing activity, new orders have fallen for 13 straight months (through December 2008), […]

The first generation of active radio frequency identification (RFID) was the conventional battery-powered active RFID. As Peter Harrop, chairman of research and analyst firm IDTechEx, explains, the power source enables […]

The financial crisis, not surprisingly, has had an impact on companies' IT budgets and staffing levels, although the impact so far appears to be minor. According to research firm InfoEdge, […]

Continuous improvement initiatives typically focus on eliminating waste, driving down costs, reducing inventories and other efficiency improvements. Certainly, UT Electronic Controls, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. and a unit […]

Top 10 Supply Chain Software Vendors RANK COMPANY APPLICATION MARKET GROWTH REVENUES SHARE RATE (2007 (IN MILLIONS) OVER 2006) 1. SAP $842 13% 14% 2. Oracle $656 10% 12% 3. […]

"Shipping goods across the U.S. has always had, and will continue to have, shippers scratching their heads over which mode of transportation is the most efficient and cost effective," says […]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's sometimes a bright side to an economic recession, and for manufacturers, that small bit of sunshine comes from the limited rate hikes they can expect to see […]

"There are ways supply chain executives at manufacturers, distributors and retailers can survive and a few ways to thrive in this downturn," says Terry Harris with Chicago consulting. he offers […]

At the plant level, continuous improvement efforts have as much to do with culture as they do with processes, particularly when it comes to employee engagement. Nordson Corp.'s Swainsboro, Ga., […]

AutoFact '91 review Integrated intelligence for manufacturing A drive toward implementing expert systems in manufacturing facilities is being influenced by two factors, according to Larry Oliva, operations program manager for [...]

Back in the saddle again Adam Osborne founds Noetics Software Computer industry veteran Adam Osborne, creator of the first portable computer and founder of the now-defunct Paperback Software, has returned [...]

Virtual reality (VR), the basis for a new generation of human/computer interfaces, is the latest advanced computing technology to ascend to buzzword status. As AI achieved its early notoreity thanks [...]

Multimedia - the marriage of text and data with audio and visual information (e.g., speech, music, still images, and full-mition video) - has assumed a major role in today's intelligent [...]

In a stunning move sure to send shockwaves throughout the intelligent computing industry, the acquisition of expert system tool vendor IntelliCorp Inc. (Mountain View, CA) by CASE tool vendor Knowledge [...]

Two large telecommunications companies Northern Telecom and GTE Data Services - have installed an expert system to improve the performance of their T1 wide-area digital transmission networks. Northern Telecom, a [...]

Neural network lends an ear In what could be the most commercial application of neural networks to date, Sound Linked Data Inc. (Mississauga, ON, Canada) has upgraded its MAX series [...]

IJCNN '91 review Neural networks at the crossroads This year's International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN '91), held July 8-12 in Seattle, WA, had a distinct hit-or-miss quality about [...]

Citibank relies on expert system for 'help' At Citibank's Network Development and Operations (Long Island City, NY), an intelligent help subsystem has been developed as a diagnostic aid to network [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the new president of the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), Bob Simpson not only presides over one of the oldest trade organizations in the country (AMT was […]

The financial crisis. War. Contaminated food. Global warming. Political infighting. Offshore competition. Massive layoffs. Belligerent dictators and despots. Depressed housing market. Rising fuel prices. Commodity shortages. In fact, the only […]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Manufacturing executives who are not necessarily supply chain experts often find themselves tripped up by the labyrinthine terminology: How close to an exact time does "on-time delivery" have […]

Healthcare companies are pretty much like any other manufacturer when it comes to their chief supply chain challenges. "Capitalizing on new global market opportunities amidst an increasingly competitive industry landscape […]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] High-tech giant IBM and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) are in vesting roughly $44 million (EUR 30 million) in a new data center at I […]

When the price of oil hit $140 a barrel and a gallon of gas reached $4.00, U.S. motorists reacted quickly and logically--they stopped driving so much. With on-time deliveries an […]

So it has come to this. On Nov. 4, we will elect a man to be chief executive of the United States who has never run a business, nor for […]

As part of its forward-looking "2016: The Future Supply chain" project, consulting firm Capgemini has developed a new set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure supply chain sustainability. The […]