Globalization of Industry

Executive Summary

The global economy continues to be turbulent for the last couple of years however the automotive industry, in particular, has been encountering the most challenging environment. Market dynamics are changing fast, thus forcing the car makers to alter their business strategies and to implement them successfully in order to stay competitive. Auto parts makers are further squeezed because they need to satisfy more diverse product requirements with low room for errors inside a relatively much shorter time span. As radical technological trends are inevitable, harnessing this opportunity will enable companies with innovative products to achieve share of the market.

The next key trends have been shaping the auto industry:

Auto-crisis: The latest crisis resulted in excess inventory and massive debt accrual for several big automakers in america and Europe. At the same time, strong growth and a healthy economic outlook in BRIC nations has helped their local companies make headway into local as well as international markets. The financial landscape is forcing the big auto companies in the US, Europe and Japan to rapidly shift their strategy and to innovate faster in order to compete with the Asian auto and auto part makers.

Globalization: The opening of the international trade boundaries has helped companies expand into new growing markets such as Asia; however, it increases the complexity of satisfying various kinds of local customer requirements making auto development complexity increase manifold.

Alternately, globalization can also be increasing the threat of serious competition from Asian OEMs which are buying the anemic divisions of western OEMs thereby leapfrogging into gaining intellectual capital that may be easily exploited along with their cheap labor.

Quality, reliability and product differentiation to suit the local market at affordable prices have become necessary to a successful product portfolio. While protecting intellectual property rights, internal collaboration as well as that over the global supply chain has become paramount.

Regulations and sustainability: Increasing concentrate on pollution and gas mileage regulations is forcing companies to appear beyond gas engines while there is a limit to reducing the emission and increasing fuel efficiency using conventional engines. With the maturity of battery technology, electric cars are changing the landscape rapidly and may even result in the hybrid cars less relevant within the coming years. Issues of safety can result in costly legal battle and evokes for that auto manufacturers. Companies have to exceed the government controls standards for their own good.

Technology: The automobile landscape is evolving rapidly. Newer technologies in auto battery, increased amounts of electronic components and control systems, software/hardware integration etc. are redefining industry. Increased technology together with shrinking product cycles is overburdening the auto industry.

Cost: One of the greatest challenges is to lower the price while maintaining top quality with a faster rate of product innovation in global marketplace, increased quantity of product types to suit local markets, and compliance with multiple group of regulations in different markets.

How does Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) help?

To deal with the automotive industry challenges brought about by the pace setting trends, companies need an in-depth knowledge of trends impacting their specific business areas in addition to a disciplined system and non-system based strategy formulation and execution strategy.

For that system based strategy, a complete solution should be flexible, robust and integrated utilizing Customer Need Management, Customer Relationship Management, Quality Management, Supply Chain Management and Product Lifecycle Management. A holistic system management approach may be the right roadmap for auto companies consider business revolves around these products or services a business offers, PLM could be the single most rewarding area to pay attention to in system implementation.

Integrated or standalone, PLM solutions ought to be given a priority as it can deliver:

Integrated design with product record
Collaborative distributed design and feedback loop
Manufacturer, Supplier and Customer Collaboration
Building the best product the very first time using distributed manufacturing
Tracking and minimizing cost
Protecting intellectual property
Maintaining regulatory, environmental and corporate compliance
Tracking product portfolio, product and project lifecycles
Closed loop quality feedback
Corrective and preventive action
Driving innovation more quickly
Increased profitability

PLM Vendor Selection

Numerous PLM systems can be found in the market today and a cautious is required with respect to cost and benefit analysis while choosing the PLM Vendors. While it may be hard to quantify the benefits of PLM savings as a result of PLM deployment, it can be calculated utilizing a matrix of the following criterion:

* Cost
+ Software and Hardware
+ Business Process Designing/Re-engineering
+ Implementation and support
+ Integration and synchronization with ERP along with other system of product records
+ Training and Change Management
* Benefits
+ Business problems solved e.g. collaboration during new product introduction, change management and CAD management, proprietary information security and use of new markets because of product compliance
+ Quality gains e.g. reduced quality related recalls, quality action requests etc.
+ Process efficiency gains e.g. efficient searches and part reusability, cool product introduction time reduction, change management time reduction and data entry related improvements.
* Roi

A detailed cost and benefit analysis matrix can help companies estimate the ROI along with the overall impact of PLM around the overall productivity.

CAD vs. Non-CAD PLM criteria

Often CAD design becomes the middle of attention while selecting PLM systems in engineering centric sectors such as the automotive industry. Electrical Computer Aided Design (ECAD) and Mechanical Computer Aided Design (MCAD) are critical for engineering functions but the PLM solution must extend across various functional areas within the extended supply chain.

PLM software with strong engineering collaboration and CAD integration capabilities to automate the item/BOM creation in the ERP/PLM system ought to be seriously considered while selecting the right PLM vendor. The best-of-the-breed PLM software with a complete enterprise solution and integrated service oriented architecture capability can easily outdo just the CAD based PLM systems in overall collaboration and efficiency gains.

On one hand, CAD based PLM vendors Dassault Systemes, PTC, and Siemens offer integration from CAD to their own PLM while lacking integration using the other CAD tools. However, software program like Oracle Agile with non-CAD PLM tend to be flexible in integration with the major CAD tools and also provides Application Integration Architecture (AIA) to propagate the merchandise /BOM data into the ERP systems. This can be particularly important for those organizations following a growth by acquisition strategy, as tough to replace CAD systems in acquired/merged entities can be simply integrated with the central PLM and the ERP systems from the parent company thereby lowering the cost substantially.

To sum up, completeness of out-of-the-box features, user-friendliness, integration capabilities, high degree of configurability and extendibility in the product suite are particularly important within the vendor selection as using multiple PLM system can be costly and can result in an inconsistent user application experience. Architecture, data model and process standardization must be integral from the long-term strategy within the PLM system business decision.

PLM Solutions

Companies may be in different phases of the maturity spectrum to formulate, adopt and implement PLM strategies; however, a long term perspective ought to be adopted how the business will morph, thereby, developing a have to deploy future solutions which will forge the best way to stand above the competition.

Auto companies should look into adopting flow-based PLM solutions where streamlining the company processes is the main focus. Business flows can span across the cross-functional business area as well as the product modules. Some of the key business flow solutions can be outlined as:

* Customer Have to Product Formulation
Product design is generally originated through the marketing or product development team who comes out with either a cool product concept or requirement(s) expressed by the customers. Customer needs could be captured from forums, enhancement requests, CRM and quality systems or other documents. Such requirements could be converted into products using collaborative efforts and cross functional interactions.

* Requirements to New Part Introduction (NPI)
When a product idea is approved internally, the part is created within the system. Product bill of material configuration, supplier part numbers, manufacturer’s part number, attachment and other associated detailed attributes are put into the part number as part of the NPI process. Workflow driven processes greatly facilitate the progression and reduce time frame while increasing data accuracy.

* Design release a
Worthwhile change control process to handle the merchandise lifecycle phases ought to be workflow driven to improve efficiency, streamline the procedure and track changes. Various workflows based change types may be used to manage the merchandise, structure, MPN change/ bulk change processes and automatically implement changes upon approval.

* Engineering Design Collaboration
Numerous internal teams in addition to external vendor engineers could work on designing the merchandise at multiple locations and this engineering collaboration can be the key to designing the product right the very first time. Apart from CAD design collaboration, another aspect of engineering collaboration is to automate the creation of the merchandise BOM structure into the central product record system where non- engineering users can make use of the information to fabricate, procure and market.

* Product Record Management
Centralization of product records is important because distributed inconsistent and partial information can boost the data maintenance cost, operation cost and quality cost substantially. A single supply of truth for product, product attributes, BOM, supplier and supplier parts, manufacturer and manufacturer parts and site information is critical to the PLM systems implementation strategy. Product record can be synchronized to another system of records using web services (Service Oriented Architecture) from the record master system.

* Document Management
Intellectual property security protection is all the greater important with global product collaboration. Document management includes check-in, check-out, checksum, document change control and bulk change capability with integrated workflow for review and approval.

* Product Portfolio to Profitability
Companies launch various projects and programs during the product lifecycle to manage, control and track the danger involved in cost, product rollout timeframe and compliance etc. Integration with Microsoft Projects is definitely an important capacity for any product portfolio management solution.

* Quality Review to Conformance
Proactive monitoring and managing of product quality during the entire lifecycle is the key to success for any company. Quality review to conformance deals with the managing process during manufacturing, customer complaints, methodical defects detection, enhancement, and corrective and preventive actions.

* Product Governance and Compliance
Company products have to comply with various standards, regulations or tracking guidelines to work in any country. Product governance and compliance solutions can be used for creating, maintaining and tracking to remain compliant.

* Product Cash strategy
Tracking and managing the product cost against target cost levels is paramount to maintaining profitability. The merchandise cost management option would be used to calculate part and resource costs across the supply chain through the entire product lifecycle.

Conclusions

The automotive market is showing signs of life in the wake of the economic recovery; however, a number of companies continue to be struggling in their product strategy. The auto industry challenges are really the as well as their response can make or break the companies. Product innovation, quality, compliance and product lifecycle reduction while keeping the expense down are fundamental factors to survive and thrive. Implementing PLM can offer the required leverage to companies in catching up and staying in front of the competition. Choosing the right consulting partner can steer you within the right direction.

Game industry evolution

Globalization from the Internet is still not finished and there are countries which are still evolving within the technical section that is communications and technologies. However during this evolution the new improvements in the already functional communications have resulted in increase of speed and traffic and in the same time decreasing the price. It has led to more expansion on the already growing sell to become not just business oriented but additionally games & fun for instance. The fact is this evolution in technology had major impact on the gaming industry, and aside from the great online gaming using the casual games and some flash player games, the part where this technology has put together performance and affordability for public is what truly concerns us in this article. The very best illustration of this increasingly more spreading technology are the game servers with the games like Call of Duty, Need for Speed, Medal of Honor and so on…

How it works

But exactly how does all of this function? Now this all started with new games that showed great potential with their multiplayer and competitor genre that the players literally screamed and where saying make it possible. It was all possible years ago, however this luxury can afford a person with the game installed and a broadband connection, because besides the necessity of the expensive high-speed internet connection, the only real placed you might have carried this out is on a dedicated server which meant a lot of money… In connection speed terms, nowadays, this is at least about 1Mbps for a guest to be able to play farmville on a server with minimum requirements, however the standard for full experience is higher. Frequently the issue isn’t using the guests that are looking to play the sport. The problem mostly lies using the game servers, either in their configuration or the (UN) available resources. With regards to configuration, this problem can be solved through fitting User interface which has the choices that may simplify the configuration from the servers to a basic knowledge level. But this is only just the start, there’s a number of other things that have to be done like administration of the server and its maintenance. All of this can be taken of the shoulders however for additional price as clearly there is nothing free. For those who have challenge with these technical things then your VPS support team may be the genuine article for you personally within the combination of helpful we tools you have all that’s necessary.

Game Server and Virtual Server

However if you’ve knowledge about this kind of managing, particularly if you have a team of gamers/techies then all you want do is rent/buy the server. Buying the server is kind of totally unprofitable, except if you’ve long term plans by using it, but with today’s prices of monthly charges for a different packages of VPS this is actually the perfect deal for just about any gamer. The next phase could be installing of a purchased game on the VPS and configuring it, but to savor the sport (and will also be been told by any gamer) the resolution and also the degree of facts are things that count the most. Without those two things there isn’t any ‘real’ game enjoyment, but let’s say you are using a 1920×1080 resolution, all high details (even though the resolution of nowadays graphics cards go much higher), the sensation of playing a game without any side effects of screen reducing (low fps), is one thing not everybody might have on the PC’s and that’s where the VPS comes into play. Standard configuration of VPs plan must have a couple core processor that is enough for any game on nowadays market, but the degree of reliability and hardware performance could be a bit spicy for any single gamer, however a team that really wants to play this game that splits the costs is the perfect solution with this giving you the chance the choose the best configuration that you’ll require but still don’t feel the price whatsoever. VPS are affordable when we are talking about business but in this case even games & fun payout in a way. Also important to notice is when fast the ping times and the broadband is with VPS serves. Speed is critical in gaming purposes and VPS offers the speed required to facilitate the games. On VPS, the main difference of a shared virtual hosting is you have root access and you also control your own background processes. Which means that when someone runs an application with a bug or virus, your will not be have contracted their virus. If someone else runs a poor script or applications that lock or interfere with the gaming environment, your games will not be bothered with their problems. The amount of security and toughness for the VPS is shown in its full glory around the illustration of game servers.

The brightness from the glittering Twin Towers of Malaysia, the main one time tallest buildings around the globe is telling many testimonials of Malaysia and just how it has been changed into one of the Asia’s wealthiest nations.

The serene great thing about the sky-high towers with a celestial background of shining stars in a clear dark night in the far distance, propelled my thoughts into the good old Malaysia where, while Dr. Mahathir Mohamad was criticising the western capitalism, how cleverly he applied outdoors economic strategies which made Malaysia to trade all over the world and it is entrepreneurs to become international players.

Dr. Mahathir’s open economic strategy having a clear vision and a mission triggered my memories back to my effort “Strategic Post-Conflict Economic Development Initiative” being an awareness program to change into Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged economy into one of the South Asia’s best. Dr. Mahathir’s strategies are well reflected in his macro – economic strategies by adopting outdoors economic policies with the realization in your mind the world trend of Globalization and Liberalization is irreversible. We are living in a period of Globalization & Liberalization, a deeply imbedded neo-classical economic thought and its applications everywhere in the globe.

This overwhelming tide of G&L is reinforced and accelerated through the wide spread of Boeing and Airbus jets, Information Technology and the better and efficient shipping facilities which made the whole world into much smaller and less distant than ever.

The present Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong once said far back in the late nineties when he was the deputy Pm, “It ‘s better to embrace globalization and liberalization proactively, at our own pace, than face the prospect of one day being swept away through the floodwaters of competition.”

His realization of embracing the globalization and liberalization might have been inherited into him through the tricks of former Pm of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew who in the long tenure, changed Singapore from a sleepy colonial outpost to a prosperous high-tech enclave and applied better open economic policies to utilize the Globalization and Liberalization in Singapore’s favour.

Now Singapore’s per capita GNP is higher than those of its erstwhile colonizer, The uk. It has the world’s busiest port and it is the third-largest oil refiner along with a major center for global manufacturing and repair industries. And this move from poverty to plenty has had place within one generation. In 1965 Singapore ranked economically with Chile, Argentina and Mexico but today its per capita GNP is four or five times during the theirs.

Lee Kuan Yew managed this miraculous transformation in Singapore’s economy while keeping tight political control over the nation. Malaysia and Singapore better managed their economies in Southeast Asia than any other countries in facing the brand new trends of Globalization and Liberalization.

Dr. Mahathir’s strategies have eventually made Malaysia into a Southeast Asian economic superpower with quantity of megastar Malaysian entrepreneurs.

Tan Sri Ananthakrishnan, the master of the Twin Towers of Malaysia and many other conglomerates is a role model for a lot of Malaysian entrepreneurs who have given real meaning to the present day Malaysia by transforming Malaysia into one of the Asia’s wealthiest nations. Tan Sri Anantha krishnan, a Jaffna origin Malaysian who had a humble beginning like a smalltime bookmaker around australia and then as a polished dealmaker having a degree from Harvard Business School, became a sophisticated oil trader with connections to a lot of from the Asia’s political and petroleum industry elite with interests in oil and gas fields in the usa.

Tan Sri Anandakrishnan later went further into orbit, with the successful launching of MEASAT – 1, the Malaysia’s maiden telecommunication satellite. Tan Sri Ananda krishnan’s success supplies a compelling testimony to Dr. Mahathir’s economic policies as well as their successful implementations.

Though, today, Dr Mahathir stepped down from power, Malaysia has a diversified and modern economy, which weathered the Asian economic crisis in1997-98 better than many of its peers. Malaysia’s success continues to be by diversifying from the export of palm oil and rubber towards the assembly of electronics with the steady provision of political stability through the resolved ethnic divisions by Dr. Mahathir.

Dr. Mahathir’s keen stewardship from the economy has spawned in a variety of projects and the latest was the Multimedia Super Corridor – a “knowledge-based economy master plan” to upgrade the Malaysia’s electronics industry right into a hi-tech application industry. The knowledge-based economy master plan which inspires the brand new trend of Business and Knowledge Process Outsourcing is really a new dimension of Globalization.

Southeast Asia first experienced a brand new and different wave of Globalization from Japan by the transferring their locations to more labour – intensive and resource – intensive Asian countries so that Japan could continue to form the international cooperation. By this Japanese initiative of worldwide – localization most of the Parts of asia are generally favourable towards the Globalization trend. The born-again WTO from the old GATT is permanently positioned to maintain the liberalization.

The trend of Globalization and Liberalization is indisputably irreversible. Therefore, it really is a great challenge to developing countries. Singapore and Malaysia are successful in tackling the Globalization and Liberalization simply because they were well – prepared.

These Southeast Asian tiger economies, all went through series of distinctive stages of economic transformation with certain common characteristics.

Lee Kwan Yew and Dr. Mahathir Mohammed had clear long-term visions and strong political leadership skills steps to make utilisation of the globalization within their countries’ favour. In Malaysia and Singapore you will find strong and efficient technocrats who’ve a chance to chart the vision into planning with the ability to get things done in a much efficient way.

The worthiness system that they have reinvented over a short span of time following the independence produced many successful women entrepreneurs in Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia and Singapore successfully defined the paths for the emergence of indigenous entrepreneurs by encouraging small and medium size enterprises.

They overcome the problems of relatively shallow and weak entrepreneurial group in Malaysia and Singapore compared with well equipped and well experienced thick and abundant entrepreneurial group in developed countries.

They altered their countries’ entrepreneurial strength to have an equal match from the game if confronted one another directly and instantly. They looked after the private sector until they are able to standalone to compete against international challenges to become themselves multi-nationals. They realized well in advance the strength and competence of the private sector which is the main market player in determining a country’s eventual competitiveness.

There’s this phenomenon where individuals are connected around the world, while money, communication and goods travel faster and simpler than ever. Globalization might have many faces, some of them positive yet others negative, depending on the point of view. You will find groups as well as countries around the world opposing globalization as the greatest fear for their integrity. New types of business throughout the past and the current decade changed the environment in a lot of ways, such as the regions of education and politics, where the methods for economy are completely separate issue. This has been possibly the fastest pacing step in the modification of human structure. Everything tends to get global.

The the market today influences business on all four side around the globe using its tripartite forces of globalization, information and communications technology and liberalization of trade. Free trading improves integration on economy lever while national borders melt underneath the storm of information and technology revolutions, which bring people closer and together faster than in the past. Geography in globalization becomes quite insignificant factor. The refreshing ideas and completely new initiatives are what make today’s economy a culture of innovation and open approach.

We reside in demanding times where new type of business and worldwide economy strives to create the private sector as one of the most significant indicators of fast and fresh economic development; on the other hand, the general public sector is rapidly reducing and losing both importance and influence, not a willing subject to vary from within. The world of globalized business approach stands for coherence, down-to-earth visions in the skilled leaders, who bring their company strategies onto competing forces around the new market. New imperatives in the world’s business today are integration, synergy, competitiveness, advantage and opportunity. Synergy is on wherever people accept the inevitability of cooperation and where various parts works together for any better outcome and overall quality; synergy will encourage teamwork and teamwork will always bring better results comparing to individual approach for the ultimate aim.

The synergy, which is a clearly among the founding stones of globalization both in business and elsewhere, promotes flexible method of the problem, active responses to numerous challenges from the new markets and opportunities in today’s economy, where merely a quality, plan and team performance may survive. Every person related to business and economy today strives to change their mindsets to the international frequency, all in order to easily understand and accept most significant conditions for success in business today.

Various enterprises with similar orientation cluster and alter through their merging, guaranteeing more exquisite, fresh and new ideas in directing the business process from the start to the final product – whatever it is. This ongoing process of globalization integrates all areas of human activities, connecting their cultures, habits and economies into a larger and richer engine, which could successfully run the race of the start up business era.

It is not strange the very term “globalization” is sometimes applied strictly being an economic term, due to its specifics in corporate economies and creating the international economy. Trade, the flow of capital, migration of workers, enterprises, goods and investments is spreading technologies farther and faster than before. Globalization is often explained because the planned mixture of economies, technologies, political as well as various biological factors, it can often relate to rapid exchange of ideas and languages through so-called acculturation, mixing habits, beliefs, behavior and many other segments which aimed to simplify the planet and bring people closer in every sense of the world.

Various international agreements changed the business face of today, incessantly striking down the barriers between nations as well as their economies, enabling the under-developed ones to profit in the developed. Many nations and countries actually benefit from such agreements on the higher level than understood by people who constantly advertise their almost xenophobic fear from globalization.

Most of the benefits globalization had brought to various businesses in a variety of aspects were surely free trade zones with practically no rates whatsoever, smaller costs to transportation, cutbacks in capital controls, global corporations, better organization of recruiting across the world and so much more.