Manufacturing

L'Oreal Uruguay needed to modernize its IT environment to provide a secure and cloud-ready infrastructure that would be capable of meeting the company's business growth strategy.

At the end of the day, manufacturing a consumer product comes down to selling, servicing and delivering.What product? How many units? Shipped by when? Which customers? On which terms? These are the kinds of questions that producers of consumer goods are generally expected to address on a more or less real-time basis.

Crocs implements PLM software from Centric to help speed development, and gain visibility earlier in the product development cycle to make better decisions.

Company CEO Ken Powell, shares the innovation-fueled plans for growth including more than 200 new items being introduced worldwide in the first half of the year alone.

K'NEX partners with Export Now with plans to launch new products to the China market on a quarterly basis.

Philips partners with Indiegogo to host crowd funded campaigns; Philips to award $100,000 plus mentoring to the top ideas.

As we enter the second half of the year, the editors of CGT revisited the headiness that you read most. What do they tell us? You love a good list, especially if it predicts consumer trends OR ranks competitive products. Let us know what you think of these articles in retrospect. Did market predictions made ring true? Do the leading products still lead? Did key consumer trends take off or taper off? And what do you expect in the second half of 2013?

More than 200 executives from leading consumer goods and retail organizations worked together to focus on how the industry can bring benefits to consumers through collaborative initiatives. The effort was triggered by the significant changes in society, consumer behavior, the environment and technology. In the end, two megatrends and three action plans emerged.