3Com Names Veteran Executives to Lead Human Resources and Global Supply Chain Operations

Eileen Nelson named SVP of HR and Tony Wang VP of Worldwide Supply Chain; Appointments Will Help 3Com Accelerate Global Business Plan

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. – 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) today announced the appointment of two new senior executives to help accelerate the company’s global business plan. Eileen Nelson has been named Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Tony Wang is the company’s new Vice President, Worldwide Supply Chain.

Nelson, who reports to President and COO Ron Sege, is responsible for 3Com’s worldwide human resources organization. She will work with the 3Com’s China-based operations to drive consistency in the company’s global HR programs.

“We are very fortunate to have Eileen join 3Com,” said Sege. “With more than 25 years working in HR, she will be a tremendous asset in instilling a one-company culture. One of Eileen’s key areas of focus is to identify and recruit highly qualified people – particularly in sales and service so we can accelerate our strategy of building a growing and profitable global networking leader.”

Nelson comes to 3Com from Tropos Networks, where she had been Vice President of Human Resources since 2005. Previously, she was Senior Vice President of Human Resources for eBay. Earlier in her career Nelson held increasingly senior HR positions for several leading technology companies. She is based in the United States.

Tony Wang brings 30 years of networking industry supply chain experience to 3Com. Based in Hangzhou, China, the center of 3Com’s strong presence in the Asia-Pacific region, Wang reports to 3Com Executive Vice President Dr. Shusheng Zheng.

Tony’s key focus is to integrate the company’s two supply chains – one in China and one U.S.-based – into a single, highly efficient global organization to deliver enterprise products that lead the industry in innovation, performance and value proposition. Establishing a worldwide supply chain will help the company reduce costs and improve operational efficiency.

Wang joins 3Com after 9 years with Nortel, where most recently he was managing director of Guangdong Nortel, a joint venture between Nortel and several Chinese networking companies. Wang managed the company’s manufacturing operations. Previously, he spent more than 20 years with networking company Alcatel in China and Taiwan, rising to General Manager of Alcatel Business Systems.

Corporate Governance

3Com’s Compensation Committee granted Ms. Nelson options to purchase 300,000 shares of 3Com’s common stock, and 75,000 shares of restricted common stock, under NASDAQ’s “inducement” exception. Per company policy, these grants are made, and the exercise price of the stock options will be determined, on the first Tuesday of the month following the month in which Ms. Nelson commences employment with 3Com. The options have a term of seven years, vest in equal annual installments over four years, and were granted under a Stand Alone Stock Option Agreement with Ms. Nelson. The restricted stock vests in equal annual installments over three years and was granted under Stand Alone Restricted Stock Agreement with Ms. Nelson.

Safe Harbor

This release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including forward-looking statements regarding executive transition, growth goals and future strategies. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, risks relating to our ability to profitably grow the company and other risks detailed in our filings with the SEC, including those discussed in our quarterly report filed with the SEC on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended February 29, 2008. 3Com Corporation does not intend, and disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking information contained in this release or with respect to the announcements described herein.

About 3Com Corporation

3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. 3Com also includes H3C Technologies Co., Limited (H3C), a China-based provider of network infrastructure products. H3C brings high-performance, cost-effective product development and a strong footprint in one of the world’s most dynamic markets. H3C holds the #1 market share position in China for enterprise stackable switch ports and router units, according to leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC. 3Com also is the clear #2 vendor worldwide in total Ethernet switching port shipments, enterprise router units, and small- and medium-business (SMB) switching. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com is a leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth application protection, infrastructure protection, and performance protection. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

Source: (BUSINESS WIRE)

 

Exostar’s Trusted Workspace Lauded by Supply Chain Experts

Wins Elite Awards for Enabling the Aerospace & Defense Community to Share Critical Information HERNDON, Va., May 15

HERNDON, Va., May 15 /PRNewswire/ — Exostar, the leading provider of secure multi-enterprise collaboration solutions to the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry, is named a START-IT “Hot Company” and one of 125 most influential manufacturing technology providers for the second year in a row. The wins honor Exostar’s Trusted Workspace for enabling secure information sharing, visibility and business process integration across global supply chains.

“In today’s highly competitive industry, extended supply chain visibility and process efficiency are critical to reduce program risk, cost and information lag-time,” said Peter Scott, vice president of supply chain solutions at Exostar. “As the platform trusted by 85 of the top 100 global A&D manufacturers in the aerospace and defense community for sharing business critical information, Exostar is committed to meeting the industry’s expanding needs through 2008 and beyond.”

Exostar’s Trusted Workspace is a secure, neutral hub where organizations can collaborate with external parties without the cost and risk of creating and maintaining multiple, unilateral connections. The Trusted Workspace offers real-time connectivity and access to a secure global community of more than 40,000 enabled trading partners; single sign-on and high quality digital credentials; and a full suite of hosted business applications that support the end-to-end product lifecycle — from sourcing to award, through design and development, to supply chain execution and aftermarket support.

Trusted Workspace Drives 2007 Growth

Exostar continues to achieve record-setting growth with strong demand for its information sharing, supply chain process integration and collaboration capabilities. The company’s momentum is reflected by several milestones in 2007:

– Successful migration of 30,000 organizations and 45,000 users to the
new Supply Chain Platform, which enables more than one million
transactions each month
– Managed the successful migration of 125 of Boeing’s highest-volume
suppliers from legacy EDI connections to Exostar’s Supply Chain
Platform
– 6,000 new trading partners were added to Exostar’s Trusted Workspace
network in 2007, making it the largest on-line community serving A&D
and related market segments

About Exostar

Exostar’s Trusted Workspace powers secure multi-enterprise information sharing, collaboration and business process integration throughout the extended value chain. Exostar was founded in 2000 to support the complex trading needs of the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies, including BAE SYSTEMS, The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Co. and Rolls-Royce. Exostar’s identity assurance products and on-demand business applications reduce risk, improve agility and strengthen trading partner relationships and profitability for over 40,000 companies worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.exostar.com.

Media contact:
Lesley Cannata
Corporate Ink Public Relations
(617) 969-9192
lcannata@corporateink.com

SOURCE Exostar

 

Driving Compliance and Ethics into Global Supply Chains

Waltham, MA — Integrity Interactive Corporation has released what it is calling the first and only Web-based service that lets a company drive its code of ethics into its global supply chain, offering a solution to help companies mitigate risk to their financial health and reputation and to their customers

The Ethics Issue

Over the past year, a number of leading corporations grabbed headlines with business scandals resulting from serious ethics and compliance breaches in their supply chains. Mattel, with its issues around lead paint in toys, is just one of the most recent examples.

Too often, supply chain scandals result in costly recalls and brand damage. But suppliers and vendors (including OEM manufacturers, parts and components suppliers, ingredient providers, re-sellers, distributors, service and support partners, and 1099 contractors) can’t meet standards and expectations that haven’t been set.

In fact, an Integrity Interactive survey of Global 2000 companies late last year found that a stunning 78 percent of companies do not include suppliers in their company’s primary code of conduct. This same study revealed that nearly 58 percent of companies surveyed were not sure if their company regularly assessed ethics risks in the supply chain.

Identifying Rogue Suppliers

Integrity Interactive delivers a company’s code of ethics to suppliers in a password-protected Web site, collects certifications and reports the results back to the initiating company. The service is free to the initiating company. Suppliers pay a nominal documentation fee but pay nothing to view or download standards of ethical conduct.

The new Supplier Certify service aims to help companies identify rogue suppliers before they get a chance to cause major problems or scandals. Three companies — Ryder Systems Inc., H.J. Heinz and bioMérieux Inc. — have already begun the process of driving ethics into their supply chain in partnership with Integrity.

More Info

 

Nortel Supplier Forum Honors Top Performers

Nortel(1) (TSX: NT)(NYSE: NT) honored its top performing suppliers and top supplier representatives for 2007 at the 12th annual Nortel Supplier Forum in Richardson, Texas.

“Nortel is focused on our customers and we are increasing quality, speed and productivity in our supply chain to create a competitive advantage,” said Joe Flanagan, senior vice president, Global Operations, Nortel. “Nortel’s suppliers partner with us to bring value in each of these areas. The annual awards given at our forum recognize the contributions of suppliers who are dedicated to relentless improvement and making business simpler for our customers.”

Award winners acknowledged at the Supplier Forum were:

- Diversity Supplier of the Year – Telamon-Corp, Inc.

- Innovation for Services Supplier – Ledefyl

- Innovation for Technology Supplier – JDSU

- Quality & Service – Services Supplier – Manning Global

- Quality & Service – Technology – Spansion

- Supplier of the Year – Renesas

- Supplier Representative of the Year – Joanne Maio, BellMicro

“Our suppliers are helping Nortel better serve our customers through improved competitiveness in service, quality, cost and inventory,” said Don McKenna, Nortel’s chief procurement officer. “The suppliers and representatives honored for 2007 represent the most outstanding performers and contributors to our global supply chain.”

More than 230 people representing 111 of Nortel’s Strategic Suppliers attended the two-day forum, which included a ‘State of the Business’ keynote from Mike Zafirovski, Nortel’s president and CEO.

Nortel presented suppliers with its vision for building a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Attendees received updates on Nortel’s Global Supply Chain and Quality, Nortel’s ongoing Business Transformation and Lean Six Sigma initiatives. Additional presentations focused on Nortel’s technology and products including Global Services, Carrier Networks, Metro Ethernet Networks, Enterprise Solutions and Global Procurement.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today’s barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.

 

Online applicant management services from Supply Chain Jobz

Supply Chain Jobz partners with a number of partners to provide quality jobs to professionals looking to build a career in the supply chain industry. Some of the other industries that can benefit from the services of Supply Chain Jobz are job seekers in manufacturing, logistics, engineering, construction and transport industries.

Some of the recruiters who regularly advertise on Supply Chain Jobz are Asian Tigers K C Dat (S) Pte Ltd, Australian Logistics Council , Banks & Lloyd Shipping Ltd, BPS Global (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Cadbury Schweppes Asia Pacific, CEVA Logistics Singapore Pte Ltd, Hong Kong Logistics Association, Lawson Williams Consulting Group, Michael Page International (Australia), Qatar Airways, Shell, Supply Chain & Logistics Association of Australia, Taipei Computer Association, The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport (Singapore) and a number of other companies for all over the world.

For job seekers the benefits that Supply Chain Jobz are free daily job alerts, access to niche job types, access to a career resources centre and a host of other services for convenience.

For the recruiters the primary benefits that they will get are applicant short-listing, online applicant management and a vast and searchable resumes database of professionals.

Source: ferret.com.au

 

Canada Needs to Foster International Supply Chain Trade, CBOC Report Says

Ottawa – Canada must foster domestic firms’ integration into global supply chains in order to secure a better standard of living for its citizens and to stay competitive, says a new report by the Conference Board of Canada. North American supply chain trade growth has plateaued in recent years, following dramatic increases in the 1990s, says a CBOC report titled ‘Stuck in Neutral’. The study argues that governments continue to view trade in outmoded terms of sales of finished goods from one country to another, but the new trans-national nature of corporations means goods and services flow across multiple borders around the globe before a finished product comes to market.

As a result, the paper argues, governments must adopt policies that recognize the new reality and help domestic firms to take advantage of lower cost labour and other efficiencies abroad, something that just isn’t happening to the extent it should, says the board.

“In aggregate the trend suggests that whereas there are rapidly growing opportunities Canadian firms are only taking small advantage of those opportunities,” said Danielle Goldfarb, associate director of the CBOC’s international trade and investment centre.

“After 2000, Canada’s overall trade data show a drop in Canadian companies’ engagement in global and regional supply chains. That did not pick up in any significant way by 2006,” the report says. In the post-free trade agreement era of the 1990s, trade between Canada and its North American partners almost tripled, but tapered off between 2000-2003 and only regained lost ground from 2003-2006, the report says.

“(North America) represented 84 per cent of Canada’s exports and 60 per cent of its imports in 2006 (with inflation removed). Mexico accounts for only a small fraction of this trade,” the report says.

Goldfarb said that when Canada’s trade with North America is removed from the equation, it becomes clear that Canada has become somewhat more integrated in other regions’ supply chains. But while Canadian firms have increased their trade in supply chains in other parts of the world, that increase has not been enough to offset the stagnation in growth in North America trade, she said. When it comes to Asia, Canadian trade is heavily weighted toward the export of raw materials and the import of finished goods. Goldfarb said Canada should be aiming to grow its trade in middle-stage goods.

“Trade in (supply chain) inputs is dominated—especially in the case of Asia—by the use of imported inputs, with Canadians not supplying significant inputs into regional supply chains elsewhere,” the report says.

Goldfarb said that U.S. firms that import information technology components for assembly into finished products were able to reduce their prices by 30% and significantly boost U.S. GDP. The failure of Canadian firms to similarly embrace emerging economies and the lower costs those countries offer could be partly to blame for Canada’s lagging productivity statistics, the board says. While importing finished goods has made some Canadian businesses more competitive, other Canadian firms could increase their competitiveness by trading in middle stage goods, she added.

Breaking production down into components across borders has been shown to be more efficient, Goldfarb said, adding Canada should be looking to attract higher value activities in the production chain such as engineering and design services. While commodities trade is important, she said that the country would be better served by having a diversified economy that can withstand a downturn in resource prices.

Goldfarb said the while much of the adjustment to the global economy will have to come from individuals and businesses, governments can help by eliminating trade barriers and investing in education to help workers adapt to rapid change.

“Examining the facts I don’t think we have a complete answer for why businesses are not taking advantage of these opportunities in other regions,” Goldfarb said. “It just isn’t clear.”

Source: economicnews.ca

 

The endless quest for indestructible supply chain

At annual risk managers gathering, strategies are shared about wiser monitoring of risk in a dangerous world

Nadia Borowski Scott

THE ‘WHAT IF?’ APPROACH Gary Lynch, a managing director in the risk consulting unit at Marsh, advises risk managers to think about potential remedies to supply chain failures.

Supply chain risk is an increasingly significant concern for corporate managers since so many U.S.-based companies are now global in reach, sourcing raw materials from one continent, manufacturing products in another and ultimately transporting them for distribution elsewhere.

Years ago, such risk entailed a shortage of raw materials or late deliveries because of transportation problems. But it has now grown to include everything from natural hazards or disasters to terrorism, pandemics, political unrest, labor problems or the loss of computer data by a vendor.

In most cases these are risks a company can’t buy insurance for, even though any one of them could ultimately result in the destruction of a company’s brand name, reputation and stock market value. Some companies are even putting pressure on their suppliers to have enterprise risk management plans in place (see “Supply Chain Only as Strong as Its Weakest Link,” FW, April 21).

Addressing and planning for supply chain disruption in an organization’s various firms is essential, but it has to come at a reasonable cost, said panelists at the Risk and Insurance Management Society conference in San Diego last week.

“Clearly, it’s about managing volatility within certain parameters or thresholds that you have set,” said Gary Lynch, a managing director in the risk consulting unit at Marsh, “but the risk profile constantly changes” so it’s imperative that it be monitored for effectiveness and efficiency, he said.

Adding to the challenges is the fact that risk managers view the issues differently than do the company’s supply chain managers, said Pamela Britt Schneider, director of global risk management for Avon Products. “Often, they have competing priorities,” she said.

For example, supply chain managers seek to consolidate vendors and reduce inventory in order to cut costs, while a risk manager wants the company to do the opposite, building in redundancies so that there are alternative sources of product in the event of a disruption.

So it’s imperative that risk managers and supply chain managers understand each other’s roles, Ms. Schneider said. She suggested that those risk managers try to “become an insider” on the supply chain management team, learning its priorities and how the supply chain works, while simultaneously identifying its vulnerabilities.

“Tell them you want to help them reach their goals and avoid disruptions,” she counseled, adding that at the same time, risk managers must balance that with preparing plans that will sustain the business in the event of a problem and be familiar enough with the issues to take on the role as the firm’s intermediary with the insurance company when presenting a claim linked to a supply chain problem.

But one growing problem is that, given the weakening economy and tighter budgets, it may be harder for risk managers to sell the importance of risk management’s role to senior management.

So supply chain managers need to build their presence in the C-suite by communicating potential problems to them regularly. One way to illustrate the significance of those risks is by presenting news clippings of recent supply chain catastrophes at other companies and their impact, said Ms. Schneider.

Among Marsh’s suggestions are that risk managers create a supply chain risk team that looks at the supply chain end-to-end. Mr. Lynch said Marsh has found that one approach to helping companies find alternatives in the event of a supply chain failure is to tell supply chain managers to bring a “what if?” mentality to their duties. That is, have them constantly asking themselves that question so they have a potential remedy in mind in the event of a supply chain failure. “This approach is not only effective but also highly practical, given the limited resources of most corporate risk departments.”

“Nearly three-quarters of risk managers say their companies’ supply chain risk levels have increased since 2005,” according to Marsh’s survey of 110 corporate risk managers in January and February.

“[So] for most risk managers, the question is not if they should take on this responsibility but how to do it, given constraints on resources and time,” the Marsh report said.

Avon may be one of the most international of U.S.-based companies, as 75% to 80% of its $9.9 billion in sales last year were made by its direct-sales force, perhaps the world’s largest, the majority of which is international.

Its scope includes sales operations in 66 countries and distribution of its products in an additional 48. It has 1,500 direct vendors globally, uses 10,000 different raw materials to produce its beauty products and processes 20,000 product orders daily, said Ms. Schneider.

Add to that the fact that most of its products are produced by third-party manufacturers, and Avon maintains worldwide warehousing, distribution and shipping logistics and one can see that Ms. Schneider is involved in a truly daunting enterprise fraught with challenges from within and without.

Ultimately, “in a post-Mattel world, you have to ensure that the products you are selling are safe and are fully tested for your customers,” said Ms. Schneider, referring to the massive toy recall and subsequent negative publicity the toy maker faced, because excessive amounts of lead were discovered in paint on some of its products.

Source: financialweek.com