http://holykaw.com/trust-me-drop-everything-and-l
Artist unknown, found on the Guy Kawasaki blog.
Make a nice pair, don’t they?
When asked what changes were planned to lower or offset fuel costs for their businesses, Buyers replied:
- 28% of the participants are buying materials from suppliers closer to their facilities
- 25% are reviewing all transportation and logistics providers contract arrangements
- 22% are planning no changes
- 18% are changing their approach to production, e.g moving from make-to-stock to make-to-order
- 7% are changing their warehousing, distribution and service center locations and/or strategies regarding supply chain network design
In addition to transportation costs rising as a result of fuel price increases, Buyers were asked to identify associated factors impacting their businesses:
- 42% of the participants had increased raw materials costs, e.g. oil derivatives such as plastics and chemicals
- 22% of buyers encountered increased costs for manufacturing processes requiring heating and cooling
- 12% of the respondents experienced reduced demand for their, or their customers, products or services
- 9% of buyers had greater difficulty attracting and retaining staff
- 3% responded that they were losing sales to more energy efficient competitors
When asked if their company was actively pursuing Green (environmentally friendly) manufacturing practices, 51% of the participants responded affirmatively, 36% stated no changes were being made, and 12% did not know if their companies were pursuing Green initiatives. The YES respondants were asked to describe the Green initiatives they were currently practicing:
- 25% are recycling manufacturing waste
- 22% are reducing waste through more efficient manufacturing practices
- 17% have minimized power consumption through more efficient machine utilization
- 16% use recycled materials as a part of their raw materials
- 16% use green materials (wood from managed forests, toxic-chemical free materials, bio-degradable materials, etc.)
Buyers employing Green manufacturing practices were also asked how it affected their bottomline:
- 29% stated Green practices saves them money
- 27% stated Green practices attracts more business
- 20% did not know if there was an effect on their bottom line
- 13% stated Green practices have no effect
- 12% responded that Green manufacturing practices cost them more money
The MFGWatch survey also inquired if Buyers were developing new products to reduce their own fuel-related costs, such as reducing the size and weight of components and intermediate packaging. 66% of the participant responded No, while 28% stated they were developing new products. 6% did not know if their companies were taking steps to develop new products.
MFG.com Buyers were asked if they were developing new offerings that would enable their customers to reduce the fuel costs associated with using their products and services, e. g. more energy efficient. 31% of respondents stated they were developing new offerings, while 60% stated they were taking no steps in this direction.
Of 47 stocks in the report, only two are up for the year, (Delcam and Navtec) while 14 are down 50% or more.
The article shows results for each of the 47 companies, and also by categories (AEC/GIS/Plant, MCAD/CAE, CAM/RP, Channel/Services/cPDM, and ECAD). As a category, ECAD is down the most, while MCAD/CAE is down the least.
More information: www.cadcamnet.com.
Randles is currently entrepreneur-in-residence as Borealis Ventures, one of the three venture capital firms backing SpaceClaim. He started with Mathsoft in 2001 as vp of marketing, and later rose to become CEO, the position he held when the company was acquired by PTC in 2006.
CADCAMNet will feature an interview with Randles on Thursday.
Randles was raised in England, but has lived in the US for over 16 years and has dual UK and US citizenship. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Oxford and has also completed executive programs at London Business School and Caltech.
Payne’s interviewer is Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner, who was less kind to PTC in his written comments than Payne was in the interview.
The higher stock price drives PTC market capitalization past the $2 billion mark. Published reports today suggest the asking price is $2 billion, but stockholders will likely want a premium above recent trading level.
PTC is coming off the second-best quarter in company history, and recently announced a blockbuster multi-year deal with EADS, the parent company of Airbus, that will over time become its largest single sale. The sale came after a long and rigorous benchmarking process that pitted PTC’s Windchill PLM software against rival products from Siemens PLM and Dassault Systemes. For details on EADS’ benchmark process, see the CADCAMNet article, “EADS Raises the Bar for PLM Benchmarking.”
In recent years PTC has been following a growth by acquisition strategy, picking up smaller technology firms with complimentary products, including Arbortext for product documentation, ITEDO for technical illustration, and CoCreate for its alternative 3D CAD software which uses an explicit approach as opposed to PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER, which pioneered parametric 3D modeling.
More details Thursday in CADCAMNet.
Nobody moves a BAD report forward, so this may be an interesting report in a good way for them. The last few certainly have been good.
While on the subject of Autodesk financials, I have noticed a lot of repositioning lately among institutional holders of Autodesk stock. One day an institutional holder will announce (by law) that they are liquidating their stake in Autodesk, the next day another Institutional holder announces they are buying a chunk of Autodesk stock. If we were seeing only selling or only buying, such announcements would send a signal. But because they are both happening at the same time, and because this is the time of the year such changes are often made (when stocks are historically less apt to jump up and down in price). it tells me institutional investors see this as a good time to take their gains and to establish new positions in the stock. In other words, it’s all good news.
PTC’s James Heppelmann (Pauses to slap the underage Neil Moses for taking a nip of Old Windchill, then replies): Them Parisian CAD boys think they’re just hot $#!+, don’t they! But I’m tellin’ ya, hidin’ their CATIA v6 hootch inside that MatrixOne contraption is just plain horse hooey. We don’t think moonshine customers will put up for it, no sir! We put our CAD moonshine in a data management box five years ago, there’s nothing fancy or new about that. But when we did it, we did it right out in the open where our customers could pick and choose. Why some of our customers even bought their CAD moonshine cabinets from them fellas what keep changing their name every time they score. We’re OK with that. But this lockin’ up the CAD data stuff, that’s just wrong! Dicky boy, tell em our secret plan.
PTC’s Richard Harrison (Stands, adjusts his suspenders, wipes the moonshine from his mouth and the sweat from his brow in a single motion with an old flannel handkerchief): It’s simple boys. We gonna call out the bloodhounds. We already got 450 sales bloodhounds out there, and were gonna buy a bunch more. And every one of those bloodhounds have caught Frenchy’s scent! They’re on the trail. We gonna have some French Roast pretty soon, if you catch my drift.
New PTC Sales Representatives at their first day of training.
Why, I hear you ask? Just because they can. Using some of the photos from the University of Phoenix Mars Mission site, the photos are read into PhotoModeler and feeding in known camera specifications, the software then lets them pin-point a few 3D points on the photos and it starts to make 3D data out of it. This is a part-manual, part-automated process that also allows items such as the Lander’s leg to be excluded from the model. Photogrammetry has definitely come a long way since I last used it.
The image below shows a screen shot of one of the models created. Click on that to see the video they made of making the model.
