Optimal performance requires collaborative planning, focus on shared goals. Across the Rio Grande river from the Texas town of Laredo, the quiet, 500-person community of Colombia, Mexico, has great expectations. This year they are asking similar questions about wireless strategy in an effort to improve their competitive positions. Wireless devices are going to be the means for communicating with machines as well as people. 5.7.2001 Houston-area manufacturers praise logistics, worker skills.
Some recent mergers provide models for other manufacturers.
As information technology grows from departmental solution to e-business enabler, security becomes a pressing issue for manufacturers. Last fall the equivalent of an electronic gong should have sounded in the heads of chief information officers across America when Microsoft Corp. was victimized by a hacker who broke into the software giant's data banks and accessed its future product files via the Internet. If it can happen to the world's biggest software company, they should have realized, everyone's at risk. In the final quarter of 2000 IBM overtook Toshiba to become the sales leader in laptops. With the ThinkPad, IBM Corp. has achieved the unthinkable.