The Internet, including business-to-business applications, is experiencing rapid growth. Numerous companies and associations are venturing into this field to offer valuable products and services to the industry while also generating economic profit. Approximately a year ago, TapNet’s Board of Directors recognized this opportunity and have since been refining their concept and approach. Over this period, TapNet has made progress in developing the concept, obtaining content, and engaging with numerous potential customers globally, who have shown their support.
TapNet is not just a website or a portal but rather an Internet-based application that helps with the business operations of trade associations. It also allows buyers and sellers to connect, interact, and eventually make online purchases. TapNet offers essential competencies and capabilities to trade associations, many of which would not be able to afford them without TapNet. It serves as the foundation for a leading industry site that takes charge instead of simply reacting to it.
TapNet’s plans include further development of its technology and information resources. This will involve creating buyer guide matrixes for associations to list their information, enhancing TapNet’s enabling features and functions, as well as providing impactful content and interaction to facilitate closer connections within the trade association community. Additionally, TapNet will implement a robust marketing program to raise awareness and promote the benefits of its platform to potential customers.
TapNet is currently funded by its Board of Directors. However, in order to fully develop a leading trade association application site, TapNet will need a significant infusion of additional operating capital. This capital will enable the development of new software technology and support an extensive promotional campaign to accompany the site.
Despite the option for directors to fund the site, there is a great potential for sharing risk and profits. Both the financial markets and the American economy acknowledge the importance of creating and servicing an industry-focused “eCommunity.” For this reason, TapNet suggests transforming into a publicly traded company in order to attract necessary capital from these financial markets and become the top online resource for the Trade Association.
The Industry and TapNet’s Product(s) and Service(s)Trade associations are groups of businesspeople who work together to advance or defend their shared interests. These associations can encompass professional, business, technical, and civic societies. Trade associations have been around since ancient times, first appearing in Egypt and China. In Europe, they gained significance during the Renaissance as merchants from Venice and other regions created organizations to address common political and financial challenges. Modern-day associations have roots in the merchant guilds of 16th-century England.
The oldest existing association in the U.S. is the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, established by 20 merchants in 1768. The New York Stock Exchange, formed in 1792, is almost as old. Initially, American trade associations were mostly local or regional, with nationwide associations emerging after the American Civil War. By 1890, they had been established in most well-established industries, and by 1900, they had become prevalent in the industrial community. In recent years, there has been a rapid growth of U.S. trade associations of employers aimed at addressing shared issues.
A trade association can serve different purposes, whether they are commercial, industrial, or protective in nature. One of the main activities of a trade association is to monitor significant trade factors such as legislation, transportation rates, tariffs, labor laws, and quality, sales methods, or inspections of goods. Additionally, trade associations aim to keep their members updated on new inventions or processes and market conditions. They also handle insurance arrangements, promote trade schools, establish selling agencies, and maintain employment bureaus.
There are around 2000 trade associations in the U.S., with a variety of online presence ranging from basic information pages to comprehensive association websites. Vortals, vertical portals, and online hubs are a prominent aspect of the Internet. Reports suggest that by 2001, the number of these sites could reach 25,000. Additionally, it is projected that the business-to-business sector of the Internet will amount to $1.3 trillion by 2003.
These websites, which are dedicated to specific industries or professions, are forming online communities. The expectation is that each industry will eventually have a dominant portal due to the high effectiveness and usefulness of these sites. TapNet aims to assist professional trade associations in creating such portals. The Internet’s convenience, speed and timeliness will make it the primary tool for networking, news, information, commerce, and association meetings.
The internet enables seamless networking, connecting people globally at any time and place. It allows members to instantly communicate for assistance, inquiries, or casual conversations. It also keeps them updated on various issues or problems they may not have been aware of previously. Moreover, it facilitates production processes in synchronizing manufacturing operations and efficiencies with the supply chain. This includes managing electrical power distribution, utilizing device sensors and actuators, programmable logic controllers, as well as network and integration services.
The text highlights the importance of eManufacturing, which allows devices on plant floors to be linked despite their inability to connect to Ethernet. The use of Ethernet has become widespread in factory networks. Schneider’s Transparent Factory product manager, Lanny Metcalf, emphasizes the need for an eManufacturing response when a company accepts an order from the Internet. This decision triggers a complete transformation of the business philosophy, requiring the reevaluation of the entire business process, including manufacturing. Simply adding some internet technology is insufficient for success.
According to Metcalf, if businesses believe that the Internet only affects their procurement, collaboration, and customer service, they are making strategic errors. Analyst Leif Erikson from AMR Research Inc. in Boston emphasizes that eManufacturing is influenced by the growing importance of the customer. Although the customer remains influential, manufacturers must understand that in the realm of e-business, the customer has significantly more power. Meeting customer satisfaction requires greater responsiveness from the production floor.
In the context of eManufacturing, it is essential to have the ability to determine instantly and in real time whether an order can be fulfilled profitably. This requires making capacity and inventories visible to the supply chain. Manufacturers require systems that can provide information on available capacity, order status, and product quality, not just after production but also during the manufacturing process. According to Dick Hill, vice president of ARC Advisory Group in Dedham, Mass., synchronizing operations across the enterprise, including the plant floor, is crucial for successful e-business. The plant floor must be a collaborative partner in the overall e-business architecture because of the collaborative nature of e-business strategies.
Otherwise, the lack of effective plant controls quickly becomes the visible bottleneck, according to Metcalf. He highlights the competitive significance of eManufacturing, stating that an e-enabled plant can potentially reduce costs and improve efficiencies just as much, if not more, than any innovation in purchasing or sales. To enable this, a new generation of Internet-compatible equipment is necessary, ranging from PLCs with embedded Web servers to power-monitoring systems capable of identifying cost-effective manufacturing locations for large orders. Metcalf suggests initiating the eManufacturing journey by recognizing the importance of establishing a seamless flow of information from the factory floor. He proposes starting with a key question: How many interfaces exist between your business systems, such as planning and inventory systems? If the answer is one, then the enterprise is already on track towards the necessary integration.
According to Metcalf, having five different systems with five different interfaces increases the potential for data corruption mistakes. He suggests that organizations should consider the cost-saving benefits of implementing a unified system, similar to how purchasing departments adopted electronic procurement. Metcalf explains that plants can save costs through predictive maintenance, remote diagnostics, and utility savings. He highlights that devices with an embedded Web server can proactively communicate, requesting help if they are about to break or reach certain preset parameters. For example, Schneider Electric’s Square D brand offers LVDO circuit breakers with a contact-wear indicator to alert operators before failure and motor starters that monitor bearing wear, temperature fluctuations, and vibration levels.
According to Metcalf, the possibilities of remote access capabilities go beyond just alerting or providing an indicator light. These possibilities include the ability to initiate email or send a signal to a pager at various departments or contractors to describe a specific problem and request service and parts. However, many manufacturers are not aware of these capabilities or do not see their value. For example, Cincinnati Machine, a unit of UNOVA Inc., has had a remote access feature on its Cincron cell controller since 1998, but only a few customers have chosen to include this option. Ken Wichman, product manager for cell and small horizontal machining centers, shares the experience of one beta site for the feature – Winterville Machine Works in North Carolina, which is a subcontractor for Caterpillar and similar companies. Additionally, aerospace companies are also utilizing this feature.
Called JACK, which stands for Java Access to Cincron Knowledge, the remote access feature is utilized by Winterville to eliminate the necessity of physically going to the plant floor whenever information from the cell controller is required. According to Wichman, the plant manager, foreman, and maintenance technician can all perform their respective tasks without leaving their offices. This includes generating utilization reports, checking the status of a hot job, and inspecting machine faults. Users are granted access to a variety of process information and report functions.
These features include a graphical display of cell-status, a dynamic display of in-cycle time, and Cincron reports on fixtures, NC programs, source routes, stations, tools, and workloads. Additionally, JACK allows users to import and export NC programs, tool data, workloads, and routes. Operator-to-operator messaging is also possible. With the JACK feature, up to five PCs can communicate with a Cincron cell simultaneously. While the option exists for accessing a machine tool from outside the plant via the Internet or intranet, Wichman is unaware of any current implementations. JACK is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The browser acts as a gateway to the Cincron cell controller, according to Wichman. In addition, the machine tool company offers a telephone-based maintenance service called Interactive Techsupport. This service allows a Cincinnati technical support specialist to connect with the CNC unit via a standard modem upon the request of the machine tool user. Bidirectional transfer of video, voice, and data enables a fully interactive session between the machine-tool user and the technical-support specialist, explains Wichman.
The value of e-enabled maintenance should be taken into account when considering the cost implications of downtime in chip making. According to one estimate, these facilities, which are worth billions of dollars, experience 30% downtime. On average, for all manufacturers, the downtime is said to be 10%, as stated by Metcalf. Additionally, when breakdowns do happen, web-enabled equipment enables OEMs to remotely monitor and fix their machines, which reduces response time and travel expenses.
Although there are significant cost and time savings associated with the electronic management of manufacturing functions, the true strategic value lies in the possibilities that electronic information provides to executives. By centrally collecting plant data, managers gain the ability to allocate work based on factors such as which plant can deliver the fastest response time or the lowest cost of production at any given moment.
Metcalf suggests that improving the management of the growing turbulence in electrical utility rate structures can be achieved by sending data from circuit monitors and PLCs located in various plant sites to a central location. This enables companies to more effectively allocate energy costs to specific cost centers, analyze trends in energy usage, and direct orders to plants in order to capitalize on hourly variations in utility rates. Metcalf provides an example of a large consumer products manufacturer that anticipates annual energy savings of 10% to 15% through the use of Web-enabled data collection.
One additional advantage is the enhanced distribution of energy expenses across specific process lines. Another example by Metcalf involves a major tier-one automotive supplier that utilizes the Internet to collect and record all utility data in a unified database, encompassing water, air, gas, electricity, and steam. The data is gathered at 15-minute intervals and then automatically transferred to a centralized data warehouse. Here, it is processed and examined by the local utility as an added benefit.
Among the reports received by the manufacturer from the utility are statistical energy-usage reports, totalized flow analysis, costs by energy source, aggregation of multiple meters, and a monthly report on total energy costs per facility. eManufacturing emphasizes connectivity challenges, and automation vendors see this as an opportunity.
Two vendors, GE Industrial Systems and Cisco Systems Inc., joined forces to create GE Cisco Industrial Networks, drawing on their expertise in factory automation and Internet networking. The motivation behind this collaboration was succinctly explained by Lloyd G. Trotter, president and CEO of GE Industrial Systems, in a June announcement: “Although companies have established connections between their office systems, partners, and customers, the factory floor – the core of manufacturing – remains disconnected from the rest of the enterprise.”
GE Cisco believes that eventually all proprietary protocols will be replaced by Ethernet-based, open standards architecture called TapNet. This will allow for seamless communication between all devices. The success of implementing web-enabled systems in factories is also dependent on the company’s familiarity with e-business. If a company does not already use the internet for purchasing, they are less likely to adopt the idea of e-enabling their plants.
Manufacturers need to start small and gradually achieve success in order to gain support. According to GE Cisco, the biggest cultural challenge lies in bridging the gap between the IT department and the production floor. Norrington warns against underestimating this challenge, as both sides have different perspectives, resources, and priorities. Metcalf suggests that the IT department should focus on proving that their work aligns with the company’s overall business goals. ARC’s Hill points out that security is a major concern for plant managers and engineers, who believe that the plant floor should be highly secure.
“The idea of an e-business implementation bringing instructions from outside the plant through the Internet can appear quite unfamiliar. The difficulties of enabling manufacturing through electronic means are also impacting automation vendors, such as Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee. In the past, we would have been labeled as a product-based company, but nowadays our products come about as a solution to a business issue,” explains Joe Kann, the vice president of global business development. Randy Freeman, the vice president of global marketing, adds, “As our manufacturing customers increasingly demand consultation services, we find ourselves focusing more on expediting control and information integration projects.”
With the advent of e-business, the integration of technology and products into enterprise-wide strategies has become necessary. We now find ourselves discussing how to solve business problems in boardrooms as frequently as we sit down with plant managers to discuss manufacturing. Various tools and resources, such as econometric, demographic, lifestyle, and psychographic data, decision support systems, the Internet, and other methods of customer access, are aiding marketing and senior management in turning customer care into a tangible reality instead of just a distant goal. Companies no longer view their customer base as a uniform group of revenue generators; instead, they strive to establish individualized relationships with each customer.
Efficient customer relationship management (CRM) plays a crucial role in delivering outstanding customer service and contributing to the success of a business. Top-notch CRM systems enable prompt responses to customer inquiries, while simultaneously enhancing sales and displaying a proactive attitude towards customer satisfaction. CRM encompasses a comprehensive strategy for sales and marketing, aiming to foster enduring customer connections and enhance overall business performance.
