Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A Model for Hurricane Evacuation

Software developed at MIT could save lives and money by improving hurricane planning.

By Brittany Sauser

As Hurricane Ike approaches the Gulf Coast, local authorities and emergency managers face critical decisions: when and how to evacuate residents, and when to draft in supplies and other aid. Proper planning could help save thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars, but the unpredictable nature of any storm also makes effective decision making difficult. A researcher at MIT is now testing computer software that combines an unprecedented amount of data to help emergency managers make faster, more informed decisions.

"Evacuation planning is very complicated," says Ozlem Ergun, an associate professor and codirector of theResearch Center for Humanitarian Logistics, at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Given how bad the [2005 hurricane] Katrina process was, it is evident that there is a big need for this to be done in a systematic way."

To coordinate a hurricane response, emergency managers have to rely on locally-drafted evacuation plans andguidelines provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). After the chaotic and poorly planned evacuations carried out during the 2005 hurricane season, new planning procedures were introduced. FEMA also now uses a computer model to estimate how long it will take to clear a city based on its population, although this model can't advise on when and how best to evacuate it.

These new measures appear to have had at least some impact. Last week, Hurricane Gustav forced most of south Louisiana to be evacuated--some two million people--in just two and a half days. The process went smoothly, but Ergun believes that this may be partly because the memory of Katrina is so fresh in so many people's minds. "In five years, people won't be so conscious about it and again may wait until the last minute to take action," she says.

The new software might help the authorities avoid future catastrophes by alerting them to unforeseen problems. The software combines historical hurricane data, current weather conditions, and projected hurricane paths to help authorities work out where a hurricane will most likely strike and how intense it may be. "The model is more efficient in clearing people over time because it eliminates the confusion that leads to gridlock," says Michael Metzger, who developed the model and is a PhD student in the Operations Research Center (ORC), at MIT.

haotic congestion: On August 30, traffic on Interstate 10 in Louisiana backed up as residents sought to escape Hurricane Gustav. Approximately two million people fled in two and a half days.  Credit: AP Photo/Brian Lawdermilk

The software is also flexible, allowing emergency managers to input their city's demographics and geography. And it adopts a novel approach, categorizing a city's population into different demographics, such as the elderly, tourists, hospital patients, and families with children, for separate evacuation. In addition, says Metzger, the model considers details of available evacuation routes. For example, as there is only one highway that leads out of Key West, FL, emergency managers would need to phase out evacuations to avoid congestion. This allows the software to provide more finely tuned recommendations, he says. The software can even advise emergency managers when to start bringing in supplies, where to set up shelter locations, and when to call in the National Guard.

The new software was built using dynamic programming--a technique often employed to solve problems involving uncertainty and parameters that change over time. "It evaluates all the different, possible future outcomes of a decision and then works backwards to make a decision at current time," says Metzger. Richard Larson, a professor of engineering systems and civil and environmental engineering at MIT and Metzger's advisor, says that the technique is well proven. For example, similar approaches are used by American Airlines to determine seat pricing and by football coaches to make real-time strategy decisions.

Better methods: The new computer model requires a population to be grouped into different key demographics. It estimates the cost of evacuating each group and the amount of lead time required.  Credit: Michael Metzger

As the system has not yet been tested on a real evacuation scenario, Metzger says that it is difficult to estimate how much time or money it could save. However, Ergun describes the technology as "very impressive."

Once the data is available, Metzger's model will be tested against the decisions made by officials during the 2008 hurricane season. Larson says that this will be completed by May 2009, and he believes that the model could be used initially as a training tool. "Just as pilots use flight simulators, if decision makers can go through different scenarios, they are going to be better at it when the real thing happens."

Ike is expected to make landfall this weekend near Corpus Christi, TX. Texas governor Rick Perry has put 7,500 National Guard members on standby, and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has told residents to start stocking up on supplies as shelters and evacuation transportation is readied.

Managing IT in a downturn: Beyond cost cutting

Managing IT in a downturn: Beyond cost cutting

Looking to slash your IT investments? Consider the possibility that targeted ones might generate savings and revenues exceeding what you could save through cost cutting.

James M. Kaplan, Roger P. Roberts, and Johnson Sikes

September 2008

Economies around the world are slowing down, and companies are looking for ways to trim spending and improve the bottom line. Although information technology often represents a small fraction of the corporate cost base, senior executives inevitably turn their attention to IT budgets for substantial contributions. Yet in some instances, IT investments deliver more value to a company’s top and bottom lines—by creating new efficiencies and increasing revenues—than any savings gained from traditional IT cost cutting.

IT has come a long way over the past decade. Budgets grew rapidly during the dot-com boom and the run-up to Y2K, then declined drastically when the bubble burst. Over the following years, CIOs, working with business unit leaders, improved the performance of IT departments by streamlining application portfolios, reducing infrastructure costs, improving governance, consolidating vendors, and outsourcing many activities.

Much has changed across the business landscape as well. Technology now meshes tightly with operations in ways that weren’t possible a decade ago; the apparel maker Li & Fung, for instance, uses IT to manage supply chains with a network of over 7,500 different suppliers. At the same time, e-business, once a buzzword, now forms a part of the corporate status quo. IT capabilities have fostered new sales channels, defined new customer segments, and even helped create new business models.

These factors make reductions in IT spending more complicated than ever. Simplistic cuts, applied across the board, may endanger critical business priorities from sales support to customer service. That potent message should resonate even among corporate officers anxious to find quick savings.

CIOs, of course, should continue to make their operations more efficient and to reduce costs, especially in areas that show signs of bloat. Discipline tends to slip during a lengthy upturn in spending such as the one that has occurred in recent years. Reducing pockets of unproductive expenditure will bring savings that help meet corporate cost targets.

Still, except in the most dire circumstances, turning off technology investments during a downturn is counterproductive. When business picks up, you may lack critical capabilities. Besides, many technology investments can improve profitability in the short to medium term.

When business and IT executives jointly take an end-to-end look at business processes, the resulting investments can have up to ten times the impact of traditional IT cost reduction efforts (Exhibit 1). The trick is to scan for opportunities—such as improving the customer experience, reducing revenue leakage, and improving operating leverage.

Creating impact with technology

Such an effort begins with a survey of operations for areas likely to produce near-term revenue and efficiency gains. In our work across a variety of industries, we have identified a number ways technology investments can have a substantial impact (Exhibit 2).

• Manage sales and pricing. Develop insights into customer segments and improve pricing discipline to increase revenues without increasing prices.
• Optimize sourcing and production. Rethink supply chains and logistics to improve the scheduling of deliveries and inventory management.
• Enhance support processes. Improve the management and use of field forces (such as installers and field technicians) and of customer support centers.
• Optimize overhead and performance management. Sharpen awareness of risk exposure and improve decision-making and performance-management processes.

To extract value from these opportunities, our experience shows, companies must make managerial improvements in two areas.

Developing new insights

Few companies have successfully capitalized on the explosion of data in recent years. Often this information, residing in separate IT systems or spread across different business units, has never been mined for insights that could add value. Small teams of business and IT staffers can find opportunities by combining a detailed understanding of business processes with straightforward analyses of consolidated data sets. When such teams use the data to compare best practices across regions or to identify under- and overserved customers, for example, they can identify hotspots of revenue leakage.

Optimizing processes

As IT becomes tightly integrated with processes, breaks in workflows often get built into systems and diminish productivity. Shining a light on these areas with an integrated view of operations and technology may well surface problems, which often involve outdated processes, manual steps, redundancies, and bottlenecks. An 80/20 approach can highlight a modest number of activities that, when corrected, deliver a disproportionate amount of value. Companies can usually apply these fixes in short order. At times, new systems may be needed, but modest enhancements or targeted work-arounds often suffice: an additional error check in a credit application, for instance, can reduce the need to rework incorrectly entered data. Adjustments to workflow processes may also promote greater adherence to corporate sales-discounting and bidding policies.

Applying these methods

Applied in high-opportunity areas, these two levers can not only make a short-term contribution to earnings but also build a foundation for future performance. Two cases illustrate this approach.

Revenue and pricing discipline

Maximizing revenues is always important, but even more so during a downturn—particularly when revenues can be increased without raising prices. For many companies, especially those with complex pricing in business-to-business transactions, poor pricing discipline is endemic. Since most pricing regimes depend on IT systems for the process and the workflow, these systems can play a central role by capturing lost revenues.

A telecommunications company has started to attack such issues by building high-value but inexpensive links between multiple silos of information. Contracts databases, sales funnels, compensation systems, CRM data warehouses, and other siloed systems formerly spanned a range of the company’s business-focused products. Just centralizing this information in one accessible repository was a big step forward: it facilitated analyses that uncovered opportunities to improve revenues by controlling unnecessary discounts and by harmonizing inconsistent pricing policies across different products and regions. The value came from integrating information flows at key points, not from creating new systems.

Introducing this degree of transparency also increased the team’s credibility with the sales force. Better information flows made it clearer which practices resulted from uncontrollable market forces and which of them the sales reps could truly control, allowing the company to evaluate them on a comparable basis.

The telco began closing the pricing gaps first by developing and testing new procedures and then by scaling up new metrics, as well as new performance-management and compensation systems. These linked the new procedures all the way from frontline salespeople up to the president of sales.

Technology played a critical role. The project team consolidated information from various product systems into a unified reporting database and developed simple pricing scorecards to make information more transparent and visible across groups. Tools linked the compensation of the sales reps to their performance on pricing by comparing their discounting and pricing records with comparable averages. Simple dashboards managed the performance of the sales force at each level, cascading up to the president of sales.

These policy and IT changes helped the telco to reduce its price leakage and to increase its revenue on new contracts by 3 to 5 percent, which translated into a margin expansion of 15 to 20 percent or more.

Employee productivity

Another critical goal during a downturn is getting more “bang for the buck” from employees—for example, by increasing a company’s operating scale, making processes more efficient to reduce rework, and stepping up efforts to automate manual procedures. IT is essential to all of these efforts.

Targeted technology investments helped one retail bank to increase the productivity of its branch office sales forces. The bank needed to adopt a more systematic approach to winning new accounts and to improve its cross-sales to existing customers. Technology helped to increase the hit rate for sales leads from marketing staffers and to create a more robust, “industrialized” way of handling referrals from tellers. These improvements allowed the company to convert such leads more quickly and to raise its revenues per employee.

The bank had relied heavily on manual, paper-based processes to identify and distribute leads, customize offers, and close deals. There were islands of automation at points throughout the sales process but no end-to-end view of its workings or how technology could improve them.

A team of business and IT staffers reviewed branch operations and quickly identified areas where focused action could produce substantial gains. The distribution of leads to the sales staff was automated, and more of them were directed to the reps with the best performance in previous campaigns. The tracking of customer outreach efforts and the keeping of sales conversion histories were automated as well, which made sales efforts more efficient and helped the company to avoid hitting clients with multiple offers. To give sales reps a full view of a client’s bank relationship at the click of a mouse, the lead-management system and the enterprise CRM platform were integrated. The system could supply “next-best offers” for each customer, as well as call scripts to help reps push new products. Data entry after each closed sale was streamlined, and vital information that could be used to model strategies for future conversions was captured more fully and efficiently.

After making these investments, the bank reported that it was on track to double the number of daily branchwide sales calls, improve its conversion rates, and significantly raise productivity. Uniform sales procedures, applied throughout the system, were expected to yield further efficiencies.

Downturns give companies a chance to buck conventional wisdom and increase their IT investments. From our experience, targeted investments in many areas can generate efficiencies and revenue growth that surpass the savings from straight cost reductions. 

About the Authors

James Kaplan, a principal in McKinsey’s New York office, leads the technology infrastructure practice for McKinsey's global IT group. Johnson Sikes is a consultant in the New York office. Roger Roberts, a principal in the Silicon Valley office, leads the firm’s IT strategy practice.

Mini-Taste schützt RFID-Chips vor unbefugtem Auslesen

Mini-Taste schützt RFID-Chips vor unbefugtem Auslesen

Von Britta Widmann
ZDNet mit Material von pte
09. September 2008, 12:28 Uhr

Hauchdünner Schalter wird durch Druck vom Isolator zum Leiter

Das britische Startup Peratech hat einen hauchdünnen Schalter entwickelt, der RFID-Chips vor unbefugtem Auslesen schützen soll. RFID-Chips, die beispielsweise in Reisepässen, Zugangskarten oder Karten von Bezahlsystemen integriert sind, können vor der Benutzung vom Besitzer selbst durch Knopfdruck aktiviert werden. Der 35 Mikrometer dünne Schalter besteht aus dem von Peratech patentierten Material "Quantum Tunnelling Composite" (QTC).

Der QTC-Schalter unterbricht die Stromversorgung des RFID-Chips beziehungsweise dessen Verbindung mit der Sendeantenne. Somit ist ausgeschlossen, dass Unbefugte die auf dem Chip gespeicherten Informationen ohne Wissen des Besitzers auslesen.

QTC ist ein Isolator, der bei Verformung, sei es durch Druck oder Dehnung zum elektrischen Leiter wird. Die Leitfähigkeit nimmt im Anschluss an die Aktivierung kontinuierlich ab. Somit könnte der Reisepassbesitzer den Chip kurz vor der Kontrolle am Flughafen aktivieren. Nach einiger Zeit isoliert das Material wieder und schaltet den Chip somit aus.

Philip Taysom, CEO von Peratech, führt als Grund für die Entwicklung des Schalters Bedenken ins Feld, dass ungeschützte RFID-Chips auf einfache Weise ausgelesen und dupliziert werden können. "Die Menschen sind sich nicht bewusst, wie einfach man diese Daten lesen kann und welche Sicherheitsgefahr hierbei entsteht." Das Problem bestehe darin, dass die Chips auf jede Anfrage hin sendeten. Bereits ein kompatibler Scanner in der Nähe des RFID-Tags reiche aus, um an die Informationen zu gelangen, ohne dass der Besitzer die Abfrage bemerke. Taysom zufolge ist QTC sehr robust, der Schalter funktioniere daher einige Jahre.

Automotive Logistics China 2008

(1888PressRelease) April 28, 2008 - A survey taken at this year’s Automotive Logistics China conference of some of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers, suppliers and logistics providers has revealed that 85 per cent of delegates expect the real price of logistics in the region to rise over the next five years. Although a hotspot for manufacturing because of its high skills base and low costs of labour, logistics costs in China are currently 18.5 per cent of GDP - nearly double that of more developed markets.

The survey was conducted at Automotive Logistics China 2008, which attracted more than 280 delegates from Chinese and foreign carmakers, tier one suppliers and logistics service providers (LSPs) to the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing. Speakers at the conference included GM’s Robert Strain, who told delegates that OEMs and LSPs would have to work together, closely, to limit price rises, if China’s competitiveness in the face of cost increases in commodities such as labour and fuel and the continuing appreciation of the Yuan, was to be maintained.

The survey further revealed that delegates expect Russia to be the top export market for China over the next five years and French logistics provider, GEFCO, along with Chinese partner Changjiu Industrial Group, revealed its latest solution for exporting to Russia. The model will see cars shipped to Russia via short sea and then transported via the Trans-Siberian railway to the Western part of the country. The move demonstrates the confidence that the automotive industry has in China’s ability to overcome the challenges it faces, as well as underlining the importance of a Russian economy that is currently one of the world’s most resurgent.

Whilst still maturing as a market, the message emanating from the conference was clear - China’s time has come. The region produced 8.8 million cars in 2007 and Paul Man, director, logistics, North China for silver sponsor APL Logistics, said that Chinese auto parts exports increased to $12.2 billion last year, from $8.9 billion in 2006 and just $2.4 billion in 2003. However, Owen Xi of NYK Car Carriers China revealed that there remain a staggering 1,000 OEMs in China, with some exporting as few as one or two vehicles per year. The consolidation of the marketplace that many players are predicting can only strengthen the country’s automotive industry in the years ahead.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Google reigns as world's most powerful 10-year-old

By Associated Press

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) _ When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on Sept. 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.

It sounded preposterous 10 years ago, but look now: Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology.

Perhaps Google's biggest test in the next decade will be finding a way to pursue its seemingly boundless ambitions without triggering a backlash that derails the company.

"You can't do some of the things that they are trying to do without eventually facing some challenges from the government and your rivals," said Danny Sullivan, who has followed Google since its inception and is now editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.

Google's expanding control over the flow of Internet traffic and advertising already is raising monopoly concerns.

The intensifying regulatory and political scrutiny on Google's expansion could present more roadblocks in the future. Even now, there's a chance U.S. antitrust regulators will challenge Google's plans to sell ads for Yahoo Inc., a fading Internet star whose recent struggles have been magnified by Google's success.

Privacy watchdogs also have sharpened their attacks on Google's retention of potentially sensitive information about the 650 million people who use its search engine and other Internet services like YouTube, Maps and Gmail. If the harping eventually inspires rules that restrict Google's data collection, it could make its search engine less relevant and its ad network less profitable.

To protect its interests, Google has hired lobbyists to bend the ears of lawmakers and ramped up its public relations staff to sway opinion as management gears up to conquer new frontiers.

"Google will keep pushing the envelope," predicted John Battelle, who wrote a book about the company and now runs Federated Media, a conduit for Internet publishers and advertisers. "It's one of the things that seems to make them happy."

In the latest example of its relentless expansion, Google has just released a Web browser to make its search engine and other online services even more accessible and appealing. Not every peripheral step has gone smoothly, though; several of the company's ancillary products have flopped or never lived up to the hype.

Extending Google's ubiquity to cell phones and other mobile devices sits at the top of management's agenda for the next decade.

But the lengthy to-do list also includes: making digital copies of all the world's books; establishing electronic file cabinets for people's health records; leading the alternative energy charge away from fossil fuels; selling computer programs to businesses over the Internet; and tweaking its search engine so it can better understand requests stated in plain language, just like a human would.

"There are people who think we are plenty full of ourselves right now, but from inside at least, it doesn't look that way," said Craig Silverstein, Google's technology director and the first employee hired by Page and Brin. "I think what keeps us humble is realizing how much further we have to go."

Page and Brin, both 35 now and worth nearly $19 billion apiece, declined to be interviewed for this story. But they have never left any doubt they view Google as a force for good -- a philosophy punctuated by their corporate motto: "Don't Be Evil."

"If we had a lightsaber, we would be Luke (Skywalker)," Silverstein said.

A "Star Wars" analogy can just as easily be used to depict Google as an imposing empire. It holds commanding leads in both the Internet search and advertising markets. The company processes nearly two-thirds of the world's online search requests, according to the research firm comScore Inc., and sells about three-fourths of the ads tied to search requests, according to another firm, eMarketer Inc.

The dominance has enabled Google to rake in $48 billion from Internet ads since 2001. Google hasn't hoarded all of that money: the company has paid $15 billion in commissions to the Web sites that run its ads during the same period, helping to support major online destinations like AOL, Ask.com and MySpace as well as an array of bloggers.

"Google is the oxygen in this ecosystem," Battelle said.

The company hopes to inhale even more Internet advertising from the biggest deal in its short history -- a $3.2 billion acquisition of online marketing service DoubleClick Inc. that was completed six months ago.

Google also is trying to mine more money from its second-largest acquisition, YouTube, the Internet's leading video channel. YouTube is expected to generate about $200 million in revenue this year, an amount that analysts believe barely scratches the video site's moneymaking potential.

Eventually, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wants the entire company to generate $100 billion in annual revenue, which would make it roughly as big as the two largest information-technology companies -- Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. -- each are now. This year, Google will surpass the $20 billion threshold for the first time.

Schmidt, 53, who became Google's CEO in 2001, seems determined to stick around to reach his goal. He, Brin and Page have made an informal pact to remain the company's brain trust through 2024, at least.

But some rivals are determined to thwart Google. TV and movie conglomerate Viacom Inc. is suing Google for $1 billion for alleged copyright infringement at YouTube, while Microsoft signaled how desperately it wants to topple Google by offering to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion this year.

Microsoft withdrew the takeover bid in a dispute over Yahoo's value, but some analysts still think those two companies may get together if they fall farther behind Google.

The notion that Microsoft -- the richest technology company -- would spend so much time worrying about Google seemed inconceivable in September 1998, when Page and Brin decided to convert their research project in Stanford University's computer science graduate program into a formal company.

Page, a University of Michigan graduate, and Brin, a University of Maryland alum, began working on a search engine -- originally called BackRub -- in 1996 because they believed a lot of important content wasn't being found on the Web. At the time, the companies behind the Internet's major search engines -- Yahoo, AltaVista and Excite -- were increasingly focused on building multifaceted Web sites.

Internet search was considered such a low priority at the time that Page and Brin couldn't even find anyone willing to pay a couple of million dollars to buy their technology. Instead, they got a $100,000 investment from one of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim, and filed incorporation papers so they could cash a check made out to Google Inc. In a nod to their geeky roots as children of computer science and math professors, Page and Brin had derived the name from the mathematical term "googol" -- a 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Later they would raise a total of about $26 million from family, friends and venture capitalists to help fund the company and pay for now-famous employee perks like free meals and snacks.

Even after Google became an official company in 1998, the business continued to operate out of the founders' Stanford dorm rooms.

Like Google's stripped-down home page, the company itself had a bare-bones aesthetic. Page's room was converted into a "server farm" for the three computers that ran the search engine, which then processed about 10,000 requests per day compared with about 1.5 billion per day now. The headquarters were in Brin's room in a neighboring dorm hall, where the founders and Silverstein wrestled for control of another computer to bang out programming code.

Within a few weeks after incorporating, Google moved into the garage of a Menlo Park, Calif., home owned by Susan Wojcicki, who became a Google executive and is now Brin's sister-in-law (Google bought the house in 2006). Even back in 1998, there was some free food -- usually bags of M&Ms and Silverstein's homemade bread.

Jump back to today: The company occupies a 1.5 million-square-foot headquarters called the "Googleplex" -- as well as two dozen other U.S. offices and hubs in more than 30 other countries. And its search engine -- believed to index at least 40 billion Web pages -- now runs on hundreds of thousands of computers kept in massive data centers around the world.

The growth dumbfounds Silverstein, whose only goal when he started was to help make Google successful enough to employ 80 people.

"It's natural when a company gets big that some people become fearful of that," Silverstein said. "All we can do is to be as upfront and straightforward as possible. We are not trying to be malicious or have some sneaky plan to put you in our thrall. There are some people who will never believe that."

___

On the Net:

A glimpse at what Google looked like in 1998:

http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/google.stanford.edu

Google's philosophy:

http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

4 September 2008

Coke swings juicy deal in China

In a move to expand into the growing China market, the world’s largest beverage company, Coca-Cola Co., will pay $2.5 billion to pick up juice maker China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd.

Coke's wholly-owned subsidiary Atlantic Industries will purchase the Chinese company's shares for $1.56 (HK$12.20) each, almost triple their last closing price, the companies said in a joint statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. That would value the Beijing-based juice producer at $2.3 billion (HK$17.9 billion).

In addition, Coca-Cola will pay for all outstanding convertible bonds and options, bringing the total to as much as $2.51 billion (HK$19.6 billion).

Coke began operating in China in 1979, but this would be the largest deal in its history in the country.

Huiyuan is China’s leading maker of pure fruit juices and nectars with about 31 production facilities.

“This acquisition will deliver value to our shareholders and provide a unique opportunity to strengthen our business in China,” said Coca-Cola Chief Executive Muhtar Kent.

In an effort to increase the Chinese juice maker’s reach, Coke can ad its distribution and supply network along with management and strategies to help develop Huiyuan’s brand.

With the deal, there are synergies that should drive operational and cost efficiencies, particularly in Huiyuan’s production footprint and in The Coca-Cola Company’s distribution and raw material purchasing capabilities, the companies said in a statement.

Zukunft der Fabriken – Planung von Fabriken

Pictures of the Future

Zukunft der Fabriken – Planung von Fabriken

Fabrik im Rechner

Lange bevor ein neues Werk entsteht, simulieren Siemens-Experten die Fabrik im Computer. Diese 3D-Modelle enthalten Tausende von Parametern und berechnen daraus zum Beispiel die optimale Anordnung der Maschinen, den Transportweg von Bauteilen, die Risiken einer Standortverlagerung oder sogar die Rückenbelastung eines Arbeiters.

Avatare als Testpersonen: Im virtuellen Abbild ihres künftigen Produktionsstandorts können Auftraggeber die gesamten Arbeitsabläufe optimieren – hier im Siemens-Motorenwerk im chinesischen Tianjin

Acht Fabrikhallen, jede so groß wie ein Fußballfeld und so hoch wie ein fünfstöckiges Gebäude – das Motorenwerk der Siemens Electrical Drives Ltd. (SEDL) im chinesischen Tianjin, zwei Autostunden östlich von Peking, kann sich sehen lassen. Mannshohe Elektromotoren werden hier gebaut, Windrad-Generatoren im Kleinlaster-Format, Schaltschränke sowie Steuerungsanlagen. Tianjin soll zum wichtigsten chinesischen Elektromotoren-Standort ausgebaut werden. Eine große Herausforderung für die Fabrikplaner: Praktisch aus dem Nichts musste das Riesenwerk in nur zweieinhalb Jahren geplant und erbaut werden. Einen solchen Produktionsstandort konstruiert man nicht mal eben auf dem Reißbrett.

Angesichts der Größe des Unterfangens wurde die Abteilung Production Processes (PP) von Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) in München eingeschaltet. Deren Spezialität ist es, Fabriken dreidimensional im Computer entstehen zu lassen. Noch ehe Bagger anrücken, gleiten bereits Bauteile auf fertigen Fließbändern durch das virtuelle Bild. Das Ziel ist klar: Je detaillierter und realistischer man eine Fabrik in der Planungsphase abbilden kann, desto früher lassen sich Fehler erkennen und vermeiden.

Seit etwa 20 Jahren beschäftigen sich die Siemens-Spezialisten mit der "Digitalen Fabrik". Dabei haben sie vor allem eines gelernt: Die schönsten digitalen Werkzeuge sind nutzlos, wenn der Planer die Arbeitsabläufe der Fabrik nicht im Detail verstanden hat. "Man muss zunächst den gesamten Planungsprozess durchdrungen haben, ehe man damit beginnen kann, virtuelle Werkzeuge einzusetzen", sagt Dr. Bernd Korves, Leiter des Kompetenzzentrums für Produktionsnetze und Fabrikplanung bei CT PP. Es geht um den gesamten Lebenszyklus vom Design bis zur Fertigung – Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) heißt das in der Fachsprache.

Das Ergebnis des Designprozesses, das Digitale Produkt, ist die Brücke zur Digitalen Fabrik ( Produktentwicklung). "In einer intensiven Verzahnung dieser beiden Prozessblöcke liegen noch große Potenziale", betont Dr. Albert Gilg, Leiter des Kompetenzzentrums für virtuelles Design bei CT, "denn das Produktdesign entscheidet letztlich darüber, ob man sich Hürden schafft oder die Effizienz der Fertigung verbessert."

Kopplung von Wirklichkeit und Simulation: Mit der SmartAutomation von Siemens A&D können neue Komponenten mit sämtlichen Parametern am virtuellen Modell (links) getestet und in die bestehende reale Anlage (rechts) eingefügt werden – beispielsweise ein Roboterarm zur Qualitätskontrolle in einer Abfüllanlage (Mitte)

Die Designdaten sind der Startpunkt für die intensive Analyse der künftigen Produktion – eine Kernaufgabe der Experten. Ermittelt wird, welche Produktionsschritte nötig sind, welche Arbeitsplätze man dafür braucht, wie das Layout der Fabrik auszusehen hat und mit welchen Arbeitsplänen die Produktion gefahren wird. Gemeinsam mit den jeweiligen Siemens-Bereichen erarbeiten die Planer oft mehrere Alternativen. Entscheidungsvorschläge werden als dreidimensionale Fabrik im Computer visualisiert und mit Hilfe einer Materialfluss-Simulation durchgespielt, wobei die Experten so weit wie möglich auf Objekte aus digitalen Bibliotheken zurückgreifen.

Mit dem virtuellen Modell können Planungsteams weltweit auf Knopfdruck in die chinesischen Fabrikhallen hineinfliegen (Bild links). Große graue Röhren sind zu sehen: die Statoren der Motoren. Daneben stehen Avatare, simulierte Menschen, die Kupferdrähte ergreifen und in die Röhren einbauen. Mit dem virtuellen Flug können die Auftraggeber bei SEDL schnell erkennen, ob an den einzelnen Arbeitsplätzen ausreichend Platz vorhanden ist, um etwa die großen Motoren zu rangieren. Änderungswünsche lassen sich jederzeit einbauen und ihre Auswirkungen sofort im bewegten Bild erkennen. Im Falle Tianjin war eine besondere Herausforderung, den Standort virtuell über einen Zeitraum von mehr als fünf Jahren wachsen zu lassen, die Produktionskapazitäten nach und nach auszubauen und flexibel eine sich verändernde Nachfrage zu berücksichtigen.

Der richtige Abstraktionsgrad. Die Kunst der Simulation besteht vor allem darin, einzuschätzen, an welcher Stelle detaillierte Informationen überhaupt nötig sind. "Es ist ein Anfängerfehler zu versuchen, die Realität 1:1 abzubilden", sagt Korves. Und es ist unwirtschaftlich, weil viel zu aufwändig und zu teuer. Den richtigen Grad der Abstraktion zu finden, ist erfolgsentscheidend: "Man muss bei einer Materialfluss-Simulation zur Layoutbestimmung nicht bis ins letzte Schräubchen simulieren, bei der Simulation einer komplexen Montage allerdings schon", erklärt Korves.

Bei einem anderen Projekt mit Siemens VDO musste Korves tatsächlich in die Tiefe gehen. Für die Fertigung eines neuen Automobil-Cockpits sollten Fertigungszellen en detail dargestellt werden, um die Ergonomie der Arbeitsplätze zu simulieren. CT setzte dafür Software der Firma UGS ein, die nun als Siemens PLM Software (A&D PL) Teil des Bereichs Automation and Drives (A&D) ist ( Product Lifecycle Management). Mit Hilfe standardisierter Kennwerte erfasst diese Software Größe und Statur des Arbeiters oder auch die Wiederholungszahl seiner Bewegungen. So konnten die Arbeitsplätze optimiert werden – etwa die Höhe der Werkbank oder die Reichweite der Arme.

Virtuelle Modelle werden heute zum großen Teil aus Bibliotheken zusammengestellt. Die Leistung des CT-Teams besteht darin, für jede Anwendung die beste Lösung zu schaffen – mitunter auch mit eigenen Bedienoberflächen. Oder eigene Simulationsprogramme zu schreiben, wenn für bestimmte Fragestellungen keine Software-Lösungen existieren. So entwarf CT in Kooperation mit der Technischen Universität München das Planungswerkzeug Plant Calc. Die Software kann Produktionsstandorte miteinander vergleichen – mit einer systematischen Bewertung von Alternativen unter Berücksichtigung aller Planungsunsicherheiten. So hat CT für ein norddeutsches Siemens-Werk ermittelt, dass ein Ausbau der Produktion in Deutschland unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen wirtschaftlicher sein kann als eine Verlagerung nach Osteuropa. Zwar sind die Lohnkosten in Deutschland höher, doch mit all seinen Optimierungsmöglichkeiten bot der Standort Deutschland die wirtschaftlichste Alternative.

Testen ohne Realitätsverlust. Dass Wirklichkeit und virtuelle Welt noch stärker verschmelzen können, zeigt A&D. Mit der so genannten SmartAutomation stehen in Nürnberg und Karlsruhe zwei Forschungsanlagen, mit denen sich künftige Automatisierungslösungen ausarbeiten lassen – real und virtuell. In Nürnberg haben die Forscher eine Abfüllanlage für Flaschen installiert, in Karlsruhe eine verfahrenstechnische Chemie-Anlage. Damit lassen sich erstmals neue Ideen schnellstmöglich auf einer echten Anlage umsetzen. Derzeit wird beispielsweise ein Roboter aufgebaut, der einzelne Flaschen im Vorbeifahren greift und sie der Qualitätskontrolle übergibt. Nach erfolgter Prüfung werden sie wieder millimetergenau in den Strom vorbeiziehender Flaschen eingefügt.

Selbstverständlich wurde diese Erweiterung zunächst virtuell geplant und getestet. Die A&D-Entwickler haben den virtuellen Roboter passgenau am Bildschirm in die reale Anlage eingefügt. Verschraubungen, Abmessungen und die Strom-Anschlüsse, die Datenkommunikation oder die benötigte Druckluft wurden vor der Realisierung verifiziert. Sogar die Betriebsparameter des Roboters spielten die Forscher vorab in einer Echtzeit-Simulation durch. Die Eingangsdaten für den virtuellen Flaschenpicker stammten dabei aus der realen Anlage. "Besonders faszinierend ist, dass sich Wirklichkeit und Simulation mit der SmartAutomation-Anlage direkt koppeln lassen", fasst der Projektleiter Bernd Opgenoorth zusammen.

Trotz der Leistungsfähigkeit der Anlagensimulation besteht aber weiterer Optimierungsbedarf – insbesondere was die Durchgängigkeit des Planungsprozesses betrifft. Denn die Daten der gesamten Prozesskette wandern keineswegs nahtlos vom ersten Designentwurf bis zum vollständigen Fabrikmodell. Häufig müssen sie per Hand von einem Programm in das nächste übertragen werden. Von der 3D-Zeichnung in die Visualisierungs-Software oder aus dem virtuellen Modell in die Sprache der computergesteuerten CNC-Fräsmaschine. "Es gilt, die Brüche zu überwinden und den Transport der Daten vom Anfang bis zum Ende zu automatisieren", sagt Opgenoorth. Daran arbeiten seine Forscherkollegen unter anderem mit ihren neuen Partnern von A&D PL.

Lego für Fabriken. Einen ähnlichen Ansatz verfolgt SmartFactoryKL unter der Regie des Deutschen Forschungszentrums für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI) in Saarbrücken. Das Konsortium aus Firmen und Instituten arbeitet ebenfalls an einer realen Produktionsanlage im kleinen Maßstab – auch Siemens A&D ist von Anfang an Gründungsmitglied und Förderer der SmartFactory. Hier wird die Produktion ebenfalls in der virtuellen Welt durchgespielt. Die Fabrik soll unter anderem zeigen, wie sich Komponenten verschiedener Hersteller kombinieren lassen. Die Idee ist visionär: In Zukunft könnten sich Fabriken wie in einer Legostein-Welt aus Standardmodulen aufbauen lassen. Das setzt voraus, dass Module verschiedener Produzenten über Standardschnittstellen verfügen.

Damit nicht genug: Nach und nach sollen alle Anlagenteile mit Funketiketten ausgestattet werden ( Die grenzenlose Fabrik). Damit wären eine automatische Inventur und eine genaue Standortbestimmung der Maschinen möglich. Das erleichtert den Umbau oder die Erweiterung einer Fabrik. Die aktuellen Maschinenstandorte könnte man in das virtuelle Modell einspielen und auf diese Weise simulieren, wie sich neue Geräte am besten integrieren lassen. "Im virtuellen Modell einer Fabrik steckt enorm viel Arbeit und eine ebenso große Menge an Information. Es ist absolut sinnvoll, diese Vielfalt an Daten mehrfach zu nutzen", sagt Eric Pohlmann, Projekt-Koordinator am DFKI.

Tim Schröder

Inventur für die virtuelle Welt

Die Planung einer Fabrik endet keineswegs mit der Schlüsselübergabe an den Auftraggeber – Produktgenerationen lösen einander ab, und Maschinenparks müssen irgendwann umgebaut werden. Doch nach Jahren sieht eine Fabrikhalle oftmals anders aus als zu Produktionsbeginn, Kabel wurden neu verlegt oder Maschinen umgestellt. Für die Planer ist es aufwändig, sich einen Überblick zu verschaffen, um die reale Situation mit dem virtuellen Modell abgleichen zu können – vor allem, wenn die Fabrikstandorte weit entfernt sind. Das bei Corporate Technology (CT) in München entwickelte Visual-Service-Support-System kann die Modernisierung deutlich erleichtern. VSS ist ein mobiles Datenfernübertragungssystem (siehe Pictures of the Future, Frühjahr 2005, Service mit Blickkontakt), das Live-Bilder und -Töne via Mobilfunk in eine Service-Zentrale überträgt. Der Arbeiter vor Ort trägt zu diesem Zweck ein mit Kamera und Mikrofon ausgestattetes Head-Set, das Ton und Bild aufnimmt. VSS wird derzeit als erste kommerzielle Anwendung in einem finnischen Stahlwerk für Wartungsarbeiten eingesetzt. Fällt eine Anlage aus, kann sich die Service-Zentrale live in die Fabrik schalten. Der geschulte Service-Techniker lenkt dazu den mit dem Head-Set ausgestatteten Arbeiter vor Ort an die entsprechenden Stellen und kann dadurch die Anlage betrachten, als wäre er selbst zugegen. Er kann sogar selbst ein Foto auslösen, es auf einen Tablett-PC des Arbeiters übertragen und darin markieren, wohin dieser als nächstes blicken oder gehen soll. Eine schnelle Bestandsaufnahme vor dem Umbau einer Produktionsanlage lässt sich so aus der Ferne durchführen. "Unsere Erfahrung zeigt, dass man sich nach vielen Jahren kaum noch auf die alten Pläne verlassen kann", sagt Joachim Häberlein, bei I&S in Erlangen zuständig für die Entwicklung kundenspezifischer VSS-Lösungen. Auch das virtuelle Modell hilft wenig. "Denn das ist nur so gut, wie die ursprüngliche Information. VSS aber macht es möglich, das Modell schnell vor Ort zu validieren und in der Zwischenzeit entstandene Veränderungen zu erkennen." Das System arbeitet mit dem internationalen GSM-Mobilfunkstandard. Tests in Ägypten, China und anderswo haben gezeigt, dass VSS in den verschiedensten Regionen zuverlässig funktioniert. Nicht mehr

Pictures of the Future ---Zukunft der Fabriken – Flughafen Peking

Pictures of the Future

Zukunft der Fabriken – Flughafen Peking

Simulation im Zeichen des Drachen

Auch Gepäckförderanlagen profitieren von der Virtual Reality. Simulation ist der Schlüssel zum Erfolg – auch für die Anlage im riesigen neuen Pekinger Flughafen.

50 km Förderbandlänge: Damit beim Bau und der Inbetriebnahme der Pekinger Gepäckförderanlage (oben) keine Probleme auftreten, erstellte und testete Siemens die komplexe Anlage virtuell (unten)

Im August 2008 ist es soweit: Die Olympischen Sommerspiele sind zu Gast in China. Noch laufen die letzten Bauarbeiten auf Hochtouren, etwa im neuen Terminal 3 des Pekinger Flughafens, das in Form eines liegenden Drachens schon durch seine Größe beeindruckt. Ab Frühjahr 2008 sollen hier jährlich 60 Millionen Passagiere und 500 000 Flugzeuge abgefertigt werden. Möglich machen das Hightech-Lösungen wie die Gepäckförderanlage von Siemens.

Mit etwa 50 km Förderbandlänge kann die Anlage pro Stunde mehr als 19 000 Gepäckstücke transportieren und sortieren. Damit gehört sie zu den größten der Welt – und zu den schnellsten: Insgesamt benötigt das System mit einem komplexen Netz aus Sortierern und Weichen und einer Höchstgeschwindigkeit von 40 km/h weniger als 25 Minuten, um ein Gepäckstück vom Check-in in das am weitesten entfernt geparkte Flugzeug zu befördern.

Der Auftraggeber, der Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA), hat die Kriterien definiert. Die Anlage sollte nicht nur das Tiefgeschoss bis auf den letzten Meter ausnutzen, sondern auch hart kalkulierte Vorgaben wie Maximal-Gepäckgrößen, Durchsatzzahlen und bestimmte Fahrzeiten erfüllen. Auch sollte sie innerhalb von 32 Monaten entwickelt, installiert und geprüft werden und dann fehlerfrei funktionieren.

Um Planung und Aufbau in dieser rekordverdächtigen Zeit zu schaffen, griffen die Ingenieure von Siemens tief in den Werkzeugkasten der Virtual Reality. Noch bevor die erste Komponente hergestellt wurde, bauten die Experten die komplette Anlage auf und testeten sie – mit einer 3D-Software. Die Erfahrung hatten die Spezialisten bereits: Ebenso entstanden die Systeme in Seoul und Madrid.

Virtuelle Koffer unterwegs. Das Team von Industrial Solution & Services (I&S) in Offenbach fütterte den Computer mit den Eckdaten der Airport-Katakomben, nutzte die für Seoul und Madrid gefertigten und in digitalen Bibliotheken abgelegten Software-Module und konnte so innerhalb kürzester Zeit komplexe Strukturen der Fördertechnik virtuell aufbauen. Das 3D-Programm erlaubte es, bis in den kleinsten Winkel zu schauen, ob die Anlage in die Räumlichkeiten passt und ob die Technik sich nicht gegenseitig im Weg steht.

Anschließend galt es, die Funktionalität der Konstruktion unter Beweis zu stellen – mit virtuellen Gepäckstücken. Tatsächlich haben sich bei der ersten Förderband-Konstellation in den Simulationsläufen an manchen Stellen der Anlage Rückstaus ergeben. Beim zweiten Versuch lagen manche Abstände zwischen bestimmten Knotenpunkten so ungünstig, dass einige Antriebe zu oft hätten anhalten und wieder neu anfahren müssen, womit die Fahrzeit von maximal 25 Minuten nicht einzuhalten gewesen wäre. Schließlich konnten die Planer des gigantischen Systems aber alle Fehler beheben – noch bevor mit dem Bau begonnen wurde.

Die virtuelle Planung und Simulation brachte auch enorme Kostenvorteile. Änderungen und Tests konnten ohne teure Prototypen durchgeführt werden. Auch wussten die Planer zu jedem Planungszeitpunkt, welche und wie viele Bauteile für die jeweilige Lösung benötigt werden. Die Software generierte nach abgeschlossener Planung mit den Montagelisten sozusagen vollständige Einkaufszettel.

Vor dem Aufbau in Peking galt es jedoch noch, die Steuerungssoftware – in der Praxis für den problemlosen Ablauf zuständig – ausgiebig zu testen. Damit Soft- und Hardware reibungslos zusammenspielen, erprobten Siemens-Experten das Programm im Siemens Airport Center (SAC) in Fürth, dem Simulations-Flughafen des Unternehmens. Das SAC beherbergt die nach Frankfurt und München drittgrößte Gepäckförderanlage Deutschlands – es ist sozusagen ein kompletter Flughafen, nur ohne Tower und ohne Flugzeuge. Gleichzeitig dient das SAC als Trainingscenter: Chinesische Mitarbeiter des Terminal 3 sammeln hier noch vor der Inbetriebnahme erste Erfahrungen mit dem komplexen System.

Im Juli 2007 fand in Peking die erste Abnahme durch das BCIA statt – nur rund zwei Jahre nach Projektstart und etwa acht Monate, bevor der Flughafen, der zu den Big Five der Welt gehören wird, in Betrieb gehen soll. Die Olympischen Spiele können kommen. Auf das Gepäck der Besucher ist der Gastgeber jedenfalls schon heute bestens vorbereitet.
Sebastian Webel

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Google Rewires the Browser

Chrome is designed to make online applications faster, more stable, and easier to use.

By Kate Greene

Credit: Technology Review

Google launched a browser optimized to run Web applications on Tuesday, a move that some observers believe could help loosen Microsoft's grip on personal computing. The new browser, called Chrome, has been built to enhance the performance, stability, and usability of complex Web applications. It could help broaden the appeal of Google's many online services.

Members of the Chrome development team and company cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin unveiled the new browser and demonstrated its capabilities at a press conference held at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

The announcement ignited excitement among technology bloggers and pundits, some of whom recalled the bitter "browser war" fought between Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE) during the 1990s. However, because Chrome essentially provides a platform for other applications, many believe that it may pose a direct threat to Microsoft's core product--the Windows operating system.

One of Chrome's most significant features is its ability to run Web applications separately, in different windows or tabs, just as an operating system can run applications as individual "processes." This promises to improve the speed and stability of Web software such as Google Docs, a suite of word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications offered by the search giant.

"If one tab dies, you don't lose the others or the browser itself," explains Darin Fisher, who led the project. This also delivers a performance boost, he says, and increases the number of Web applications a person can use simultaneously. "If one tab is busy, you can switch to another one and do work," he says. "This is nice for performance, especially if you have a newer computer with a dual-core CPU," because it can run separate operations using each of its cores.

Tabs also function as a prominent navigation tool in Chrome, since users can remove a tab and keep it running as a simplified, stand-alone application. Ben Goodger, lead user-interface engineer on Chrome, notes that people use Web applications differently than they do static Web pages. "We looked at browser interfaces and realized that some of those features--back, forward, and reload--weren't relevant for Web applications," he says. "We want to break Web applications free of the browser."

Web ready: Chrome features a minimal user interface and shows users recently visited sites when a new tab is opened. Each tab also runs as a unique “process” to improve speed and stability. Credit: Technology Review

Another benefit of running browser tabs separately, Google says, is increased security. Usually, when hackers try to install malware on a computer via the browser, they look for bugs in a component called the rendering engine. Chrome runs separate rendering engines and segregates each one with another layer of protection. "It's an extra level of security," says Fisher. This means a hacker would need to find not only a bug in the rendering engine but one in the protection layer in order for the malware to make its way out of the browser and into a computer.

Other features resemble improvements offered in the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox. For instance, the address bar--which Google dubs the Omni bar--automatically provides suggested search terms and Web page addresses and can be configured to work with a number of popular search engines. Chrome also offers a private browsing mode, called Incognito, in which no identifying information is recorded during Web surfing. Web history and search information are automatically cleared from the computer and the browser's memory when an incognito tab is closed.

Microsoft, for its part, only recently introduced Internet Explorer 8, a browser that boasts a number of improvements over previous versions. In a statement regarding the Chrome release, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, says, "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and--more than any other browsing technology--puts them in control of their personal data online."

At Google's press conference on Tuesday, competition with Microsoft was not on the agenda. "In the case of Chrome, we saw an opportunity to rewrite the browser from scratch," said Brin, adding that the browser's source code would be made freely available for anyone, including Microsoft, to modify and reuse. "The open-source community can evolve [Chrome] further, into an even more powerful engine for the Web," he said.

The world wide web

The second browser war

Sep 3rd 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From Economist.com

Google’s new web browser is its most direct attack on Microsoft yet

AP

SEVERAL years ago, Silicon Valley was rife with rumours that Google, then primarily a search engine, might be building a new web browser to rival that of Microsoft, called Internet Explorer (IE), or even an operating system to rival Microsoft’s Windows. Google mocked those rumours and they died down. But if Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, is to be believed, the speculation itself made him think that “maybe it’s not a bad idea”. And so this week Google did launch a new browser, called Chrome, that is also, in effect, a new operating system. The rumours, says Mr Brin cheekily, “just happened to migrate from being false to being true.”

Chrome amounts to a declaration of war—albeit a pre-emptive one, in Google’s mind—against Microsoft. So far, Google has been coy about admitting the rivalry (whereas Microsoft’s boss, Steve Ballmer, is obsessed with it). In web search and advertising, Google dominates roughly as Microsoft does in operating systems and office applications. To the extent that Google has challenged Microsoft’s core business at all, it is through its web-based word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. But these, so far, have few users.

Google’s fear has been that Microsoft might use its grip on people’s computers and browsers to tweak the default settings so that Google’s search engine and other services might be disadvantaged. This, after all, is how Microsoft behaved in the 1990s, when it crushed Netscape, an early browser.

Microsoft’s fear, by contrast, has been that computing as a whole might move from the operating system as a platform for applications to the web (or “cloud”). This is why it attacked—also pre-emptively, in its mind—Netscape and landed in antitrust court.

As Google rose to dominate the web during this decade, it therefore invested a lot of energy into a rival web browser to IE, called Firefox. An open-source project (whose code can be altered by anybody), Firefox comes from a foundation, across the street from Google’s offices, that happens to be based on the remnants of the old Netscape. Google’s engineers contribute code to Firefox and pay the foundation a share of advertising when people search Google in the browser’s toolbar. Thus Firefox rose to become the largest browser after IE, with almost 20% of the market.

But Google concluded that even Firefox could not protect it against Microsoft. It began to define its business as “search, ads and apps”, where the apps (applications), with a few exceptions, run on the web and are accessed through a browser. So Google decided to build a browser from scratch, explicitly for those fledgling services, from word processing to snazzy virtual worlds.

Chrome, which it launched with a cheeky comic book instead of a press release, is the result. It is based on tabs, each of which runs independently of the others for security, speed and stability. It even works offline. It is, in short, the scenario that Microsoft has dreaded ever since Netscape. As Arnaud Weber, a Google engineer and one of the characters in the comic book, says in a speech bubble: “We’re applying the same kind of process isolation you find in modern operating systems.” It is a geek’s way of saying that developers and consumers may soon stop caring about the operating system on their own hard drive altogether.

Ingeniously, Chrome itself need not take a lot of market share to fulfil Google’s objectives. Google does not expect to sell or otherwise “monetise” Chrome directly. Like Firefox’s, Chrome’s source code is free for anybody to change and improve, and even for rival browser-makers to incorporate. That could even include Microsoft. As Mr Brin says, “we would consider it a success” if the next version of IE were “built on Chrome, or even if it were just a lot better as a result of Chrome.” Google wants ever more people doing ever more things on the web, and peace of mind that nobody, not even Microsoft, can interrupt that.

Football crazy

Sep 2nd 2008
From Economist.com

More upheaval in English football, as investors from the Middle East spend $360m on Manchester City

FANS were surprised, in 2003, when a little-known Russian oil billionaire splashed out $226m for Chelsea football club. These days foreigners spending fortunes on English clubs is far more common. The Premier League has become the richest and most famous in the world. On Tuesday September 2nd, Manchester City, a mid-table team, changed hands for the second time in little over a year. Abu Dhabi United Group, a Middle-Eastern consortium backed by oil-rich royals, will pay $360m for the club, quite an improvement on the $165m paid in 2007. We have left out another club, Derby County, which was bought for some $100m in January but relegated in June.

AFP

Chinese city rankings

Chinese city rankings

Streets of plenty

Sep 2nd 2008
From Economist.com

Shanghai tops a new ranking of business conditions in mainland China's cities

THE port city of Shanghai is the best place in mainland China for doing business, according to a new set of rankings from the Economist Intelligence Unit (see background and methodology). Shanghai tops an overall ranking of 44 Chinese cities that were compared in five key areas—economic performance, market opportunities, labour market, infrastructure and environment. Hard on its heels come fast-growing Guangzhou (top for infrastructure) and the capital, Beijing (home to the best labour market). The top 15 also includes large cities focused on the booming domestic market, such as Tianjin and Chengdu. Cities with lower external trade exposure have performed well during the recent slowdown in global growth, and are likely to continue to do well over the next decade as a maturing Chinese economy becomes less dependent on exports for growth. The ranking was compiled by the China Regional Forecasting Service, a new business information service launched by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Chrome

Google veröffentlicht Internet-Browser

Google greift mit einem eigenen Web-Browser die Dominanz von Microsofts Internet Explorer an.

Die neue Software mit dem Namen Google Chrome werde in einer Testversion bereits am Dienstag zum Herunterladen bereitstehen, teilte der Internetkonzern im offiziellen Unternehmensblog mit. Das Ziel sei ein Browser, der schneller, benutzerfreundlicher und sicherer ist als heutige Software.

© dpa

Die Konkurrenz im Browser-Bereich nahm zuletzt deutlich zu. Meistgenutzte Software ist Microsofts Internet Explorer. Sein Marktanteil beträgt derzeit laut Marktforschern knapp 75 Prozent – nach mehr als 90 Prozent noch vor einigen Jahren. Auf Platz zwei folgt demnach mit knapp 20 Prozent das Open-Source-Programm Firefox. Ein weiterer Konkurrent ist Apples Browser Safari. Der Quellcode von Chrome werde wie bei Firefox offen sein, betonte Google. Das heißt, die Software kann von Programmierern frei weiterentwickelt werden. Chrome nutze zum Teil die selben Elemente wie Firefox und Safari.

Zwei Jahre Entwicklungsarbeit

Nach Darstellung von Google sei man wegen Unzulänglichkeiten bisheriger Browser zu dem Entschluss gekommen, eine eigene Software zu entwickeln. Die wichtigste Neuerung dürfte sein, dass einzelne Unterfenster (Tabs) getrennt von einander wie einzelne Prozesse betrieben werden. Das soll die Stabilität des Programms erhöhen.

Dem „Wall Street Journal“ zufolge hat Google etwa zwei Jahre an dem Browser gearbeitet. Beim Internetkonzern sei die Sorge gewachsen, Microsoft könnte mit seinem Browser Nutzer für seine eigene Suchmaschine gewinnen, was Googles Marktanteil drücken würde, hieß es unter Berufung auf informierte Personen.

Droht ein neuer Browser-Krieg

Der Vorstoß von Google weckt angesichts des angespannten Verhältnisses mit Microsoft Erinnerungen an den sogenannten Browser-Krieg Mitte der 90er-Jahre. Microsoft hatte damals binnen kurzer Zeit den zunächst führenden Netscape Navigator zur Bedeutungslosigkeit geschliffen, unter anderem durch die kostenlose Beigabe des Explorer zum Windows-Betriebssystem.

Microsoft hatte erst vor wenigen Tagen die zweite Testversion seines neuen Internet Explorer 8 vorgestellt, der nach Einschätzung von Experten mit den aktuellen Ausgaben von Firefox und Safari mithalten kann. Einige Beobachteter merkten dazu an, neue Datenschutzoptionen im Internet Explorer könnten Google das Geschäft mit sogenannter Kontext-bezogener Werbung erschweren. Solche Anzeigen, die passend zum Beispiel zu Suchergebnissen eingeblendet werden, sind das Kerngeschäft des Internetkonzerns. Der Google-Browser soll aber ähnliche Einstellungen ermöglichen, bei denen der Nutzer Daten für sich behalten kann.


PR-Panne verrät Browser-Pläne

Der Chrome-Browser kommt außerdem pünktlich zum Erscheinen der ersten Handys mit dem von Google initiierten Betriebssystem Android. Die mobile Internetnutzung gilt als das nächste große Wachstumsfeld. Apple mischt hier mit Safari auf dem iPhone mit.

Die überraschende Ankündigung der neuen Software geht laut Google auf eine Panne zurück. Das Unternehmen schickte dem Internet-Blog Google Blogoscoped zu früh eine Kopie eines Comics, in dem auf knapp 40 Seiten in anschaulicher Form die Vorzüge von Chrome dargestellt werden sollen. Nachdem die Information sich dadurch im Netz ausbreitete, reagierte Google mit der offiziellen Stellungnahme.

Im Visier der Datenschützer

Wenn Chrome bei den Nutzern gut ankommt, könnte dies die Gewichte im Internet noch weiter zugunsten von Google verschieben. Der Konzern ist die dominierende Kraft bei Werbung im Internet und bietet zahlreiche Programme und Dienste von E-Mail über Büro-Software bis zum virtuellen Globus an. Zugleich dürfte der Vorstoß sehr genau von Datenschutzaktivisten beobachtet werden: Google wird oft vorgeworfen, zu viele Daten seiner Nutzer zu sammeln.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Turning Visitors into Customers

Visiting a company's website could result in a cold call.

By Erica Naone

Business websites often encourage visitors to leave contact information so that sales staff can get in touch, but this only rarely works. "How do you leverage otherwise anonymous traffic?" asks Martin Longo, chief technology officer of startup Demandbase, based in San Francisco. Last week, his company released a tool, called Demandbase Stream, that aims to answer this question. It digs up information on Web visitors in real time, helping salespeople follow up on a visit with a cold call and a pitch.

Applications such as Salesforce.com already let sales staff keep track of existing customers or potential customers, but Demandbase Stream falls into a newer category of tools designed to help them find new customers in the first place.

Demandbase Stream, which is aimed primarily at companies marketing to other companies, cross-references the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of computers accessing a website with publicly accessible information and data from business databases. On a ticker tape that runs along the top of a user's screen, it shows the last 25 visitors to a website. If the user clicks on a visitor, the software shows her the name and location of the company that the visitor comes from, details about the company, and information about the visitor, such as the search terms that brought her to the site. Together, this offers clues about what the visitor might be interested in buying.

New leads: Demandbase Stream helps businesses with sales and marketing by providing salespeople with relevant information about visitors to a company website. A ticker tape shows visitors in real time and can reveal the company that they come from as well as their geographical location.

Detailed information is vital for spotting potential customers. Just knowing that someone from IBM visited a website won't help much, since Big Blue has offices all over the world. Demandbase Stream, however, shows which IBM office the visitor came from, and what departments are located there. This basic service is free, but the user can choose to access another tool provided by the company--Demandbase Direct--that digs up contact information for specific people for a fee. The software can ignore traffic from nonbusiness users by filtering out data from home Internet service providers like Comcast. It can also filter out traffic that originates from outside a given geographical area of interest.

To use the service, a company just has to embed a snippet of code into pages on its site. The code can be pasted into every page or only at specific points to get information relevant to certain products. The code lets the Demandbase Stream software collect raw data from a visitor--for example, how many pages he views. It also records and sends IP address information to the Demandbase Stream software for further analysis.

When a visitor comes to the site, it is relatively easy to identify her company and geographical location, Longo says. The hard part is combining this raw data with business information from sources such as D&B/Hoovers and Lexis Nexis in order to get much more detailed information. "We have a lot of technology driving matching, linking, and resolving entries correctly," Longo says.

If the user decides to buy contact information, algorithms score the results based on how appropriate they are to his product. The system also checks against contacts that the user already has, in order to avoid selling duplicates. Longo also stressed that all contacts in Demandbase's system have the chance to opt out.

Laura Ramos, a principal analyst at Forrester Research who focuses on business-to-business marketing trends and technology, says that services like Demandbase could prove useful, but adds that it may be hard to measure its impact on sales and marketing. "Until we can demonstrate that automation actually gives a reduced cost of customer acquisition," Ramos says, businesses may be reluctant to spend money on such services. Still, she believes that marketing departments could use Demandbase Stream to build very specific advertising campaigns, targeted at the exact type of company already visiting their website. Ramos also notes that competition with other startups in the field is fierce withother start-ups, including Zoominfo, Leadlander, and Hubspot, is fierce. But Longo says that Demandbase does a better job of integrating relevant data.

Demandbase recently received funding from Adobe Systems, Altos Ventures, and Sigma Partners, and Longo says that the company is working on adding support for the professional social-networking site LinkedIn, so that a user can see links between his network of contacts and visitors to a corporate website.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

A Chinese Challenge to Intel

Researchers have revealed details of China's latest homegrown microprocessor.

By Kate Greene

In California last week, Chinese researchers unveiled details of a microprocessor that they hope will bring personal computing to most ordinary people in China by 2010. The chip, code-named Godson-3, was developed with government funding by more than 200 researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology (ICT).

China is making a late entry into chip making, admits Zhiwei Xu, deputy director of ICT. "Twenty years ago in China, we didn't support R&D for microprocessors," he said during a presentation last week at the Hot Chips conference, in Palo Alto. "The decision makers and [Chinese] IT community have come to realize that CPUs [central processing units] are important."

Tom Halfhill, an analyst at research firm In-Stat, says that the objective for China is to take control of the design and manufacture of vital technology. "Like America wants to be energy independent, China wants to be technology independent," Halfhill says. "They don't want to be dependent on outside countries for critical technologies like microprocessors, which are, nowadays, a fundamental commodity." Federal laws also prohibit the export of state-of-the-art microprocessors from the United States to China, meaning that microchips shipped to China are usually a few generations behind the newest ones in the West.

Enter the dragon: This single-core central processing unit, known as Loongson, or "dragon chip," was designed and manufactured in China. Chinese engineers have the goal of deploying quad-core chips by 2009.
Credit: Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Despite its late start, China is making rapid progress. The ICT group began designing a single-core CPU in 2001, and by the following year had developed Godson-1, China's first general-purpose CPU. In 2003, 2004, and 2006, the team introduced ever faster versions of a second chip--Godson-2--based on the original design. According to Xu, each new chip tripled the performance of the previous one.

Godson chips are manufactured in China by a Swiss company called ST Microelectronics and are available commercially under the brand name Loongson, meaning "dragon chip." Loongson chips already power some personal computers and servers on the Chinese market, which come with the Linux operating system and other open-source software. "They use a lot of open-source software because it's free," says Halfhill. "The Chinese government wants to get as many PCs into schools and as many workplaces as they can."

The latest Godson chips will also have a number of advanced features. Godson-3, a chip with four cores--processing units that work in parallel--will appear in 2009, according to Xu, and an eight-core version is also under development. Both versions will be built using 65-nanometer lithography processes, which are a generation older than Intel's current 45-nanometer processes. Importantly, Godson-3 is scalable, meaning that more cores can be added to future generations without significant redesign. Additionally, the architecture allows engineers to precisely control the amount of power that it uses. For instance, parts of the chip can be shut down when they aren't in use, and cores can operate at various frequencies, depending on the tasks that they need to perform. The four-core Godson-3 will consume 10 watts of power, and the eight-core chip will consume 20 watts, says Xu.

This latest chip will also be fundamentally different from those made before. Neither Godson-1 nor -2 is compatible with Intel's so-called x86 architecture, meaning that most commercial software will not run on them. But engineers have added 200 additional instructions to Godson-3 to simulate an x86 chip, which allows Godson-3 to run more software, including the Windows operating system. And because the chip architecture is only simulated, there is no need to obtain a license from Intel.

Erik Metzger, a patent attorney at Intel, says that the chip will only perform at about 80 percent of the speed of an actual x86 chip. "That implies that [the Chinese government] is going after a low-end market," he says. This is the same market that Intel is targeting with its classmate PC and low-power atom microprocessor. Metzger adds that the inner workings of the chip, known as its instruction set, have not yet been disclosed, making it difficult to know if or how any x86 patents may have been breeched.

The Chinese team hopes to further boost its chip program through collaboration with other companies and researchers. "We still lag behind the international partners a lot," says Xu. "But we are doing our best to join the international community."

Der Wettkampf der größten ContainerhäfenDer Wettkampf der größten Containerhäfen

Der Wettkampf der größten ContainerhäfenDer Wettkampf der größten Containerhäfen

Nummer 1: SingapurAsien ist der Kontinent der Riesenhäfen, wie Daten des Hamburger Hafens belegen, die Grundlage dieser Bilderserie sind. Mit 27,9 Millionen[Photo] umgeschlagenen Containern pro Jahr führt der Hafen Singapurs weltweit. Immer mehr Frachtschiffe steuern den Stadtstaat an: Zwischen 2006 und 2007 stieg der Containerumschlag um 12,7 Prozent.Im Jahr 2007 wurden hier rund 27,9 Millionen Container (TEU) umgeschlagen. Ein TEU (Twenty-foot-Equivalent-Unit) entspricht einem 20-Fuß-Container mit den Maßen von 6,1 Meter Länge, 2,4 Meter Breite und 2,6 Meter Höhe.

Nummer 2: ShanghaiUm 20,7 Prozent steigerte der Hafen der südchinesischen Boomtown Schanghai seinen Containerumschlag im vergangenen Jahr. Mit 26,2 Millionen Containern überholte Schanghai damit Hongkong und stieg zum weltweit zweitwichtigsten Containerhafen auf 

Nummer 3: HongkongDas Wachstum des Hafens Hongkong blieb dagegen mit 1,5 Prozent bescheiden. 23,9 Millionen Container wurden dort 2007 umgeschlagen. Hongkong muss bereits länger um seine Vormachtstellung kämpfen - manch ein Hafen des chinesischen Festlandes wächst deutlich schneller

 

Nummer 4: ShenzenNur ein Fluss trennt Shenzen von Hongkong. Die Stadt im Süden Chinas gilt als einer der am schnellsten wachsenden Metropolen der Welt. Sie hat mehrere Containerterminals, deren Frachtaufkommen 2007 um 14,2 Prozent wuchs. 21,1 Millionen Container wurden innerhalb eines Jahres in Shenzen umgeschlagen 

Nummer 5: BusanDer Hafen der zweitgrößten Stadt Südkoreas wuchs zuletzt wieder kräftig: Um 10,5 Prozent legte der Containerumschlag im vergangenen Jahr zu - auf 13,3 Millionen

Nummer 6: RotterdamDer größte Hafen Europas rangiert im weltweiten Vergleich an sechster Stelle - und konnte sich damit um einen Platz verbessern. 10,8 Millionen Container wurden 2007 in Rotterdam umgeschlagen und damit 11,8 Prozent mehr als im Jahr zuvor. Der Hafen der südholländischen Stadt gibt direkt und indirekt 320.000 Menschen Arbeit. Unser Bild zeigt ein Öllage

Nummer 7: DubaiDer Frachthafen in der Freihandelszone Jebel Ali südlich der Stadt Dubai: Das Emirat am persischen Golf ist Heimat des siebtgrößten Containerhafens der Welt. Mit 8,8 Millionen umgeschlagenen Containern 2007 konnte sich Dubai innerhalb eines Jahres um zwei Plätze verbessern. Das Wachstum des Frachtaufkommens ist rasant - 19,9 Prozent

Nummer 8: KaohsiungKaohsiung, der wichtigste Hafen Taiwan Chinas, rutschte dagegen im weltweiten Ranking um zwei Plätze ab. 10,2 Milllionen Container wurden 2007 hier umgeschlagen. Das waren 4,4 Prozent mehr als 2006. Im 17. Jahrhundert war Kaohsiung noch ein Dorf, heute wohnen in der Stadt gut 1,6 Millionen Menschen

Nummer 9: HamburgIn Deutschland ist er der größte, weltweit auf Platz neun: Der Hamburger Hafen schlug 2007 rund 9,9 Millionen Container um. Die Steigerung um 11,6 Prozent ist zwar beachtlich, dennoch rutschten die Hanseaten um einen Rang nach unten. Dass man sie auch heute noch als "Kaffeesäcke" tituliert, liegt an der langen Handelsgeschichte: Beim Umschlag von Rohkaffee sind die Norddeutschen weltweit führend

Nummer 10: QingdaoDie Hafenstadt in der chinesischen Provinz Shandong kickte 2007 Los Angeles aus den Top Ten. 9,6 Millionen Container wurden in Qingdao umgeschlagen - 22,9 Prozent mehr als im Jahr zuvor. Es scheint nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis die Metropole südlich von Peking Hamburg überrundet - auch wenn dieses Bild den Eindruck macht, als sei ganz Qingdao ein verschlafener Ort für Hobbysegler