Are you running your plant operations with serious risk? Most industrial applications lack recommended updates and security patches, which make them a target for hackers. Outdated architectures, backups and spares can also create problems.

As the manufacturing industry spins its web across the world more and more, the network connecting businesses and their partners become much more complex. One of these areas most impacted is a company's supply chain, the main catalyst of one's ability to produce and distribute their products as efficiently and to as large and diverse of a customer base as possible. While this broadening supply chain ability certainly brings along many benefits, the ability to manage risk, particularly in the area of quality, becomes quite challenging.

Analyst Insight: Tracking supply chain metrics can help organizations identify opportunities for quality and performance improvement. However, identification is half the battle; organizations must adopt practices that can lead to improvement. One of these practices is the development of close relationships with key suppliers and service providers. Through these relationships, organizations can realize improvements in both performance and quality. - Becky Partida, Research Specialist, APQC

Lean is one of the biggest management ideas of the past 50 years. No less than Ford's original assembly line, it has transformed how leading companies think about operations - starting in assembly plants and other factory settings and moving more recently into services ranging from retailing and health care to financial services, IT, and even the public sector. Yet despite lean's trajectory, broad influence, and level of general familiarity among senior executives, it would be a mistake to think that it has reached its full potential.

The company turns a Frito-Lay plant into a multi-project "learning lab," as it seeks to offset environmental impacts related to water, energy and waste generation.

The company turns a Frito-Lay plant into a multi-project "learning lab," as it seeks to offset environmental impacts related to water, energy and waste generation.

Total Quality Management. Quality circles. Quality with a capital "Q." It all seems so...20th Century.