Saturday, May 14, 2005

Cradle to Cradle Ken Graber, a marketing guy at ABB's Power Products Division who is not afraid to think a little out of the box (maybe that's why we get along) sent this link to an interview with William McDonough in Newsweek. McDonough and his mentor Michael Braungart wrote a book titled "Cradle to Cradle" that I highly recommend. This is forward thinking stuff about environmental impacts and declining raw materials. Rather than taking the "Chicken Little" approach, however, they try creative thinking about materials that can be recycled more efficiently and ways that can maintain a clean environment without the dislocations that would happen with the end of a consumer society. Worth pondering. 8:03:48 AM    comment []

Microsoft Boosting Office Microsoft manufacturing team members at National Manufacturing Week had a new tack this year. Usually they have talked about operating system technology or Web services. This year the focus was on Office and how this suite of applications can fit tightly into manufacturing applications. This week there were two announcements. See this article from Computerworld. By the way, I had almost written off supply chain application supplier i2 not having heard much for a long time. Sounds like it had a good users conference and may be on the rebound. Office to become front-end option for more app users. Microsoft this week announced agreements with Interwoven and i2 Technologies that will let users access their applications from Office, furthering its efforts to entrench the software with corporate users. [Computerworld News] 5:49:17 AM    comment []