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Modern Manufacturing
Plex Manufacturing Blog
10 Strategies for Making Compliance a Competitive Advantage in Aerospace and Defense
We define quality as a product or service that meets and exceeds customers’ expectations on a consistent basis. Accomplishing this in aerospace and defense — an industry known for its complexity and depth of compliance and quality management requirements — is an ongoing challenge....
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In Search of Speed, Stability and Security in Aerospace and Defense Supply Chains
Staying competitive is often the No. 1 concern for today’s aerospace and defense (A&D) manufacturers. Key components to these efforts include successfully triangulating cost, schedule, security, scope and reliability constraints, all in order to improve supplier orchestration and time to market. But where to start? Many A&D manufacturers agree that the first step in managing these many…
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Five Strategies for Becoming a Demand-Driven Manufacturer Using Cloud Computing
It’s time for more manufacturers to question what being demand-driven really means by looking at their businesses the way their customers do. Having accurate forecasting processes, a finely-tuned sales and operations process (S&OP) or being great at new product development and introductions isn’t enough. These are all great attributes, but they must be synchronized into a cohesive strategy…
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Roundup of Aerospace and Defense Forecasts and Market Estimates for 2013
The paradox of how much to spend on national defense and security versus social programs is a challenge all nations are facing today. Emerging economies are projected to be the most adept at managing this paradox. However, given their relatively higher levels of gross domestic product (GDP) growth versus their slower-growth (and often larger) counterparts — and once you consider that many of…
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Guest Post: Analytics vs. Intelligence – Do You Know the Difference?
Business analytics is often the next evolutionary step after business intelligence (BI), which is all about convenient access to enterprise information in a form that is useful to executives and managers. As I had discussed in a previous blog post, the goal of a useful BI system is to help an organization collect, maintain, and organize business data to develop strategy and build a competitive…
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Why Customer Commitment Gets Far More Than Lip Service in the Cloud
“The customer is king.” “The customer is No. 1.” Most organizations brag about their commitment to the customer — to the point where I suspect many people have become skeptical of these kinds of statements. This is especially true in business technology, where customers historically have found it hard to get the great service they were initially promised....
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Guest Post: 350 Million Transactions - What Does It Mean in Manufacturing?
Critics who question the growth of the cloud delivery model will likely be stopped in their tracks when they hear about one of our recent manufacturing milestones. Manufacturers who use Kors Engineering’s MACH2 product to automate cloud transactions with plant floor machines through programmable logic controllers (PLCs) have now cumulatively managed more than 350 million plant floor transactions…
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Manufacturing Enterprise Technology: The Best Is Yet to Come
This week, I have the privilege of welcoming several hundred Plex customers to PowerPlex, our company’s 12th annual user conference in Columbus, Ohio. We’re engaging in many of the typical user conference activities – introducing new features, training on existing product functions and networking. But the spirit in the air is far from typical for a user conference....
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Guest Post: Increasing Employee Engagement Through Increased Operations Visibility
There is a lot of interest in visibility these days, and rightly so. Visibility throughout the enterprise and to the far reaches of the supply chain is becoming more and more pervasive through the evolution of sensors, RFID, Internet connectivity, cellular technology, location services (GPS) and even the Internet of Things — which recognizes that nearly everything can and will be visible and…
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Guest Post: Can You Afford Unprofitable Customers and Products?
During a visit to a local manufacturing company, I learned that the company had recently undergone a difficult transition. After taking a close look at their business and their customers, it had become obvious that margins were significantly different between one group and another. Some products and customers were profitable to serve; others, not so much....
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