Despite sustained industry efforts throughout 2012, the goal of accelerating inventory velocity remains elusive for the global outsourced manufacturing business, contributing to the sluggish growth outlook for the first half of 2013. To be sure, the new year has delivered some reasons for optimism, with improvements in select macroeconomic data such as a boost in…
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Normally, we'd pick just one winner for our new EBN photo caption contest, but since this was the inaugural, and since we had a couple of really clever ones for the image below, we're going to bestow two winners for February: @DavidE and @Comms1. Here's DavidE's caption: “Sew it Seams that Sheets of Success Spawn…
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Some days ago, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressed concern about the company losing its cool. More specifically, he is concerned about Apple not being the cool computing system for too much longer. This is not the first time Wozniak has expressed concern about the future of Apple. Last year, he was worried that Microsoft might…
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There are two ways to approach a competitive environment-based marketing program: As a field general or as a bean counter. Guess which approach works better? More on that later, but first, attitudes regarding budgets vary greatly. Some believe in creative financing, such as having their PR or ad agency invest in their company: We expect…
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The sun rose on the United States today, which, if you've followed some fevered commentary about the so-called federal sequestration budget cuts, came as a surprise. Congressional leaders and President Obama failed to reach agreement to avert $85 billion in domestic cuts across federal agencies, and so those cuts hit automatically starting today. Earlier in…
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With all of the up-and-coming new talent to the field of supply chain, there has been a lot of discussion around how to integrate the newcomers into a mutli-generational work environment. In addition to that, we need to address the technology, communication, and social styles that come to bear, crossing over the generations. Let's complicate…
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NUREMBERG, Germany — I've spent this week in Europe for Embedded World here but transited through the UK, and it's hard to miss the top news story here: The unfortunate discovery of horsemeat in frozen beef burgers on what appears to be a massive scale. The scandal has provoked a recall of the burgers with…
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Hewlett-Packard Co. is taking another stab at the tablet market. This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the company unveiled the HP Slate 7, a low-end tablet powered by the Android operating system and priced at $169. The product provides an affordable entry point for consumers looking to buy a tablet under…
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BARCELONA, Spain — If there's one thing mobile executives like to talk about at the annual Mobile World Congress love fest here, it's the vertical disruption mobile technology is causing. And this year (MWC: Mobile Technology Madness), as in every year, executives have a few key disruptions they highlight. In the past there was a…
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A 2012 study by market research firm IHS found that more than 12 million counterfeit electronics and semiconductor components have entered the distribution chain since 2007, with 57 percent of all counterfeit parts obsolete or end-of-life components. Many of these parts make their way into mission-critical industries, such as defense and aerospace, where a malfunctioning…
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