By Dennis Michalis

In our first two issues we covered our customers' success in Responsiveness and Lean Manufacturing. The natural segue is Global Manufacturing.

Responsiveness and Lean Manufacturing in a global sense is what today's competition is all about. We have been 100 percent focused on this, as have been the market leaders that we serve. With this issue, including our white paper, feature article, and solution highlight on global manufacturing, hopefully you begin to see the complete recipe for success that we envisioned for our product suite a few years ago and that is currently playing out even better than we could have planned.

I know most of you weathered the storm and have emerged from a prolonged, ongoing cost reduction cycle. Perhaps some of you are now sticking your head up and having a look around for the first time in a while.

You may or may not be surprised to discover how aggressively your peers, competitors, and partners have changed their business models in addition to their operational profiles during the recent economic downturn. Indeed, the best competition is always changing to win.

I have not talked to a customer in the last two years that was not going through more than just cost down after cost down — they were all going through foundational shifts in their business as well.

For instance, in the 2003 Fujitsu Annual Report there is a section on Panasonic Mobile Communications and their use of glovia.com. The mobile phone market is extremely dynamic — it changes constantly. Panasonic is a leader in the field and is actively expanding its business on a global scale under the banner "new communication life to global customers."

Previously, Panasonic had a collection of stand-alone systems for production management, materials procurement, and sales management — with data that could not be integrated and difficult total inventory visibility. Using glovia.com, they now integrate information from each area, plan centrally, and quickly adjust production to reflect conditions in their volatile market. Panasonic can manage sourcing of key product components from Japan, manufacture the units in Beijing, package them to specific customer specifications in the Czech Republic, and then ship the finished handsets to other markets in Europe.

This is what global integration and dramatic change to win is all about.

So not only have we teamed with most of you to streamline your business processes and squeeze out costs, we have worked strategically with major market leaders in the US, Europe, and Japan who have taken advantage of the slower business cycle to execute visionary business strategies that are more difficult to undertake in busier cycles.

The good news is that you will all benefit from the by-products of the resulting product enhancements and professional expertise. We feel the equity in your Glovia investment needs to increase significantly like this just as everyone wants the equity to increase in any other long-term investment that they live with every day, such as a home.

When a manufacturer goes global, the company is not just setting up an office in some distant port. The locus of control is changing. The enterprise is shifting the very nature of their command and control in order to operate, source and supply globally and plan centrally.

This can be a radical change in company culture — customer strategies change, engineering and product management is consolidated and centrally planned — but even very large companies are achieving it successfully with our software. We even have customers who have positioned themselves to acquire a local entity and turn right around and go global with it. This is not easy, but the infrastructure in glovia.com is there to support it.

'Global' does not mean 'offshore.' Global manufacturing is really about 'best shore.' You may not have to go to China to make a product; the best option could be right where you are, or if not China then the Czech Republic. A global manufacturer needs the ability to take the best option, not merely an offshore one, in either a distributed or a centrally planned fashion. This is one of many reasons why we keep our suite so flexible.

Speaking of China, I encourage you to review the Fujitsu and Glovia Worldwide columns in this issue that address our activities there. China is not an outpost to us. We have a mature presence there. Exciting things are developing and we thought that you might want to stay informed.

Let me also remind you about the annual User Group coming up this May. I look forward to catching up with you there and I am especially excited to view the user presentations. Some of our customers will be coming to share stories of the gutsy changes they have undertaken recently, like the type I described above. Presentations are a conference highlight and I encourage you to consider making one of your own.

Either way, I hope you will write to me and let me know about your recent successes: dmichalis@glovia.com.

Until the next time, all the best to you.

Sincerely,

Dennis R. Michalis
President and CEO
Glovia International, Inc.