Global Manufacturing: How best-in-class manufacturers beat the competition with global strategies and architectures

Retaining market leadership requires not only continued performance improvements but also the ability to profitably marshal global resources to make your world work together to effectively serve customers. Today's manufacturing leaders are evolving into global enterprises united by business processes that connect remote plants, factories, customers, and supply chain partners. Future competitiveness will rely on forward-thinking strategies and the intelligent use of technology to fuel the continuous innovation of new products and processes.

Learn how best-in-class manufacturers are embracing global manufacturing strategies and architectures to:

• Energize and sustain Lean manufacturing strategies
• Respond and adapt to market changes
• Manage diverse sets of manufacturing plants, suppliers, and contract manufacturers
• Simplify and rationalize a complex IT infrastructure to support operations

This IndustryWeek-hosted webcast -- featuring Michael Bittner, manufacturing research director AberdeenGroup; and Tom Comstock, senior vice president at Apriso Corporation -- will present results of AberdeenGroup's "Global Manufacturing: MES and Beyond" industry study. The presenters will review how best-in-class manufacturers like L'Oréal, Saint-Gobain and International Paper are embracing a new paradigm in manufacturing: enterprise-class manufacturing operations execution.

A Global Manufacturing Benchmark

85% of best-in-class companies report that they already have a strategy in place to unify processes and systems across locations. Their top action for realizing this strategy is business process improvement through standardization.

Aberdeen Group’s research of best-in-class manufacturers has found global companies that have mature manufacturing operations, KPI programs, and are initiating enterprise level programs that incorporate multiple production facilities are more likely to be best-in-class. While the vast majority of companies rely on ERP and database management capabilities to accomplish enterprise tasks today, emerging technologies such as enterprise MES, manufacturing intelligence, and business analytics are playing an increasingly important role. Join IndustryWeek for this informative webcast and learn how you can make your world work together to beat the competition.

Duration: 60 Minutes

Moderator
	Adrienne Selko eMedia Editor IndustryWeek Adrienne Selko manages the editorial content of IndustryWeek's award-winning Web site. Before joining the staff in 2004, Selko was managing editor of corporate publications at a large regional financial institution. She was also an editor for the U.S. based publication of a medical manufacturing company. Prior to that she ran a public relations and marketing company that published a best-selling healthcare book. Selko received a bachelor's of business administration from the University of Michigan.
Panelists
	Michael Bittner Research Director, Manufacturing AberdeenGroup Michael Bittner joins AberdeenGroup as a research director for manufacturing and the connectivity between manufacturing and supply chain. With over twenty-five years of experience, with proven strengths in the business applications area, he has held various senior management positions in development, implementation consulting, and industry research. Bittner has designed, developed, implemented, deployed and managed projects for financial, manufacturing and supply chain applications both in the United States and Europe, and has published research on a variety of topics related to manufacturing and supply chain.
	Tom Comstock Sr. Vice President of Product Marketing Apriso Tom brings 20 years of manufacturing software marketing and sales experience to Apriso. Most recently, Tom was VP of Product Marketing at Brooks Software, a $120M software division of Brooks Automation, which focuses on real-time execution software for high tech manufacturers. Previously, he held VP of Marketing roles at Sequencia Corporation, a leader in PLM and automation for batch manufacturing companies, and at Promis Systems, a leader in MES systems for semiconductor manufacturers. Tom also provided sales and marketing leadership to Palette Systems and worked in electronics manufacturing with Consolidated Micrographics. Tom received his BA from UCLA, Masters from UC Berkeley, and his MBA from Pepperdine.