A company briefing is a one-on-one conversation with an industry leader, analyst, consultant or vendor about the state of materials and information handling. It's a chance to have a candid conversation about the trends and direction of the marketplace today. en-us http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500.html?nid=4136 Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information. Subject to its Terms of Use November 10, 2009 http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1820050382.html?nid=4136 This week, RedPrairie and NetSuite announced an agreement that represents a potentially interesting development in the world of on-demand, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), solutions for supply chain execution software. I say potentially because, according to my contact at NetSuite, the goal… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1130050313.html?nid=4136 I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but every once in a while I notice that I'm hearing the same sort of thing from a couple of vendors, put two and two together, and come up with a trend. Of late, I’ve noticed something I’m calling “from product to solution.” In fac… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/150050215.html?nid=4136 When it comes to the supply chain, inventory management stops at the distribution center dock door for most companies. Yes, a retail chain may have an inventory management program to track the inventory inside its stores, but it’s still in a silo. Often, there is a disconnect between the inv… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1000050100.html?nid=4136 Every year around this time, Modern publishes a special report on the top 20 public and refrigerated warehouse providers in the country. This year’s report by Lorie Rogers will be one of the highlights of our November issue. Keep an eye out for it. Also around this time, Dr. Robert Li… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/340050034.html?nid=4136 I read a column titled The New Untouchables by Tom Friedman in the New York Times the other day. It made me think about what’s next for the materials handling industry. The short-term outlook for our industry is tough. At the Material Handling Industry fall meetings in Amelia Island t… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1280049928.html?nid=4136 Last week, I ran into Mike Dempsey at the MHIA fall meetings in Amelia Island, Fla. I’ve been talking to Dempsey about trends in technology, especially warehouse management systems and RFID, since the late 1990’s. At Modern, were talking to Dempsey about using RFID for asset management… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1660049766.html?nid=4136 At lunch today, I turned on CNBC as the Dow briefly passed 10,000. It occurred to me that the economy is giving off more mixed signals these days than an evening of speed dating. Example: Today’s optimism was driven by a better than expected decline in retail sales in September. That… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1180049318.html?nid=4136 Last week, I wrote about how the lowly caster was playing a starring role in lean manufacturing at KIA’s new assembly plant in West Point, Ga. Today, Michael Smith, the COO of PALNET, a supplier of wooden pallets, made an equally bold assertion about another product you don't give mu… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/290049229.html?nid=4136 When you think of lean manufacturing, you probably don’t think about casters. Heck, if you’re like me, you probably don’t think about casters at all. But a press release about the new KIA Motors automotive assembly plant in West Point, Ga. had me looking at casters in a new light. … http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/710049071.html?nid=4136 Last week, Diamond Phoenix announced that it had been acquired by Systems Logistics, the logistics division of System Group S.p.A., a $500 million a year industrial trading company based in Modena, Italy. Tom Coyne, Diamond Phoenix’s CEO, was at a trade show in Europe last week, but o… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1280048928.html?nid=4136 What if they threw a recession and no one came? That describes how HK Systems has approached the last year in business, according to Mike Gonzalez, HK’s CEO. I spoke to Gonzalez Tuesday at Supply Chain Forward, the material handling and logistics conference sponsored by HK in Par… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/900048890.html?nid=4136 I’m in Park City, Utah this week at Supply Chain Forward, the annual materials handling and logistics conference sponsored by HK Systems. I sat through two conferences this morning that got me thinking about where we are today when it comes to going green in the supply chain, everyone… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/590048859.html?nid=4136 Even in a down economy, the industrial RFID market is still expected to grow about 10% in 2009, one of the only segments of the automatic data collection industry on the uptick this year. Manufacturers may not be slapping very many RFID tags on cases and pallets before they ship them out th… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/970048497.html?nid=4136 Back in July, Wal-Mart announced plans to have all of its suppliers calculate and tag their products with the full environmental costs of making those products. Now, this isn’t going to happen tomorrow. In fact, Wal-Mart has not announced a timetable for this new initiative. Still, if… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1850048385.html?nid=4136 For Modern’s August cover story, I took at look at something we called affordable innovation. The idea was simple: What are materials and information handling companies doing to put the price of innovation in reach of today’s slashed budgets. Since then, I’ve been keeping… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/670048267.html?nid=4136 Not much lasts these days. Your friends move. Your favorite restaurant closes up shop. Your favorite show gets cancelled. And companies go bust. Casters, on the other hand, endure. That’s right. I’m talking about those wheels on the bottoms of everything from the porta… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1200048120.html?nid=4136 A 570,000 sq ft automated distribution center put together by HK Systems in Mossville, Ill., is blurring the line between OEM, systems integrator and materials handling end user. It’s also a showcase for what could be a new model for the materials handling industry in the future. Here… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/260048026.html?nid=4136 Sometimes the stars align and all is right with the world. If you get a chance to check out the cover story in the August issue of MMH, I wrote about affordable innovation. The story highlights examples of what 15 leading materials handling and supply chain software companies are doing… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1180047918.html?nid=4136 The other day, I had a chance to talk to Rik Schrader, senior vice president of global sales and marketing for Retalix's supply chain division. With more than $225 million in total revenue, 1,300 employees, and customers in 50 countries, Retalix may be the largest supply chain-related software provi… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/410047641.html?nid=4136 IGPS calls on the FDA to investigate the safety of wooden pallets. The NWPCA wants the Feds to look into the safety of plastic pallets. Get ready to rumble. The Ultimate Fight Championship is supposed to be, well, the ultimate when it comes to two guys beating their brains in. But for sh… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/370047437.html?nid=4136 Carts are cool! Better yet, carts are green. I’ll admit, it’s pretty hard to get all lathered up about something as basic as a cart, but I had a conversation with Larry Tyler, the founder of Kinetic Technologies, better known as K-Tec, last week that I found pretty interesting. … http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1590047159.html?nid=4136 If you pick up a newspaper or flip on the TV, you can’t miss the advertisements for cash for clunkers. To stimulate auto sales, the feds are willing to give you up to $4,500 for your old clunker if you’ll buy a new car or truck with improved gas mileage. I spent last weekend looking arou… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/420047042.html?nid=4136 How green is your supply chain? It’s not an idle question if you’re one of the 100,000 suppliers to Wal-Mart. Last week, the retail giant announced a plan to have its suppliers calculate the full environmental costs of making their products. Wal-Mart will translate that info int… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/960046896.html?nid=4136 Talk about software for the warehouse, and two things come to most peoples’ minds: Warehouse management systems (WMS) that manage orders and people in the conventional warehouse and warehouse control systems (WCS) that manage automated materials handling equipment – the conveyors, sorter… http://www.mmh.com/blog/1000000500/post/1920046792.html?nid=4136 If you don’t eat, drink, sleep and breath technology, it can be a nightmare to keep up with all the applications and trends. We’re all expected to Tweet, blog, get LinkedIn and create a FaceBook page just to show we get it. Who has time to figure it all out? The supply chain man…