IT and the World Wide Manufacturing Revolution

Jim Ryan

For 30 years, manufacturing companies have gone through a revolutionary journey that has resulted in dramatically higher productivity, lower costs, and improved quality. In this presentation, Jim Ryan will examine this journey and will draw parallels between the manufacturing revolution and current trends in information technology.

James Ryan is the Director of the CAI Consulting Practice in Wilmington, DE. His expertise is in business and technology transformation, process reengineering, performance management, and customer relationship management. Mr. Ryan has over forty years of experience in the information management industry helping clients redesign more effective businesses that result in the growth of profitable revenue streams as well as lower cost structures. He has worked in a variety of industries with a wide variety of clients including distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, development engineering, utilities, finance services and insurance.

Prior to his position at CAI, Mr. Ryan had been a senior management consultant with the IBM Consulting Group. During his career with IBM, Mr. Ryan had held a variety of technical marketing, and general management positions. His field assignments have given Mr. Ryan broad experiences in the diverse problems associated with Information systems across a wide range of businesses. His information technology assignments included CIO and general management responsibilities for the operation of a large IBM Information Technology center. He was instrumental in the implementation of redesigned process and metrics that significantly improved the quality and efficiency of the center.

Dan Galorath is one of the principal developers of the SEER-SEM™ software evaluation model. His teaching experience includes development and presentation of courses in Software Cost, Schedule, and Risk Analysis; Software Management; Software Engineering; and Weapons Systems Architecture. His company, Galorath Incorporated, has developed tools, methods, and training for software cost, schedule, risk analysis, and management decision support. Among Mr. Galorath's published works are papers encompassing software cost modeling, testing theory, software life cycle error prediction and reduction, and software and systems requirements definition. Most recently, Mr. Galorath was named winner of the 2001 International Society of Parametric Analysts (ISPA) Freiman Award, awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the theoretical or applied aspects of parametric modeling. Dan is also the author of Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Management.

Bob Lawhorn has over 40 years of experience in software development, measurement, and project estimation. He spent his first twenty years at Bethlehem Steel working on applications related to steel, mining, and ship building and his next twenty years at CAI, where he invented CAI's application development methodologies and fixed price estimating matrices. Bob is currently CTO of CAI where he spends most of time consulting with companies and government agencies on how to implement application development best practices within their own organizations.