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Most recent blog entries
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Looking for Some Good News – The Saga Continues… |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
4/28/2007 6:08 AM
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Recent blog entries in this space have dealt with
headlines in the news that affect the daily lives
of Americans in particular, and many more people
everywhere. The latest news has not been encouraging.
Here are several more recent news items for readers’
consideration:
- The worst economic growth in four years is raising
concern that troubles in the US housing market will
spread and throw the country into a recession before
the year is out. The economy practically crawled at
a 1.3% pace in the opening quarter of 2007, the US
Commerce Department reported on April 27. The
reading on gross domestic product in Q1 2007 was
the weakest since the 1.2% pace in Q1 2003, right
before the US-led invasion of IRAQ. The 1.3% GDP
growth in Q1 2007 was far weaker than the already-
sluggish 2.5% rate in Q4 2006. The country’s
bloated trade deficit al ...
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Looking for Some Good News – A Brief Update |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
4/17/2007 9:27 AM
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In the blog entry here on April 14, the following
paragraph was included:
On April 13, the Labor Department's Producer Price
Index came in flat for March 2007, an encouraging
result if one does not eat food or buy gasoline or
use electricity. However, including the real world
impacts of energy and food, wholesale prices rose
another full percent in March, following an even
larger 1.3% rise in February.
Readers may be interested in these additional facts:
Yesterday, April 16, the Consumer Price Index results
for March were announced. Consumer prices shot up
by the largest amount in nearly a year, driven by huge
increases in the cost of gasoline ...
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Looking for Some Good News |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
4/14/2007 8:55 AM
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One week ago, this space was devoted to just-released
reports on relatively weak job creation in the US.
Further, what new jobs there are, are arguably in
service sectors that do not create real US wealth
and productivity. On the other hand, the US
Manufacturing Sector has been losing jobs for nine
consecutive months. The April 7 blog entry ended
with some economists suggesting that a US recession
was nearly 50% likely soon.
So in the interest of staying “fair and balanced”,
this week was devoted to trying to find some good
economic or political news to convey. Alas, here’s
just a sampling of the many new reports from the
last 7 days:
The US dollar traded near a record low against the
Euro on April 13, 2007. The Euro bought $1.3547 --
its highest level since January 2005, and only a
cent short of its all-time high from Decem ...
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US Jobs Data for March -- Good News? |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
4/7/2007 9:26 AM
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Yesterday, April 6, 2007, the US Labor Department reported that
180,000 new jobs were added to non-farm US payrolls in March.
This figure elevated the average number of new jobs added per
month in Q1 2007 to 151,000. While 151,00 per month may
seem large, and it is compared to the dismal record over the
last six years, 151,000 per month does not even keep pace
with the need for new jobs generated by normal US population
growth.
Another concern, of course, is just where the jobs are being
added. For example, in March, 75% of the new jobs were
tallied in services sectors: Retailers added 36,000;
educational & health care services expanded by 54,000;
leisure & hospitality services picked up 21,000, while
the government itself added 23,000.
These services sectors are not where the rea ...
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Innovation |
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Brian Seitz
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By Brian Seitz on
4/1/2007 6:20 AM
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During the past several months I’ve been hopping around different organizations looking at how they are operating in the product creation sense; large corporations, small businesses, and all sorts of companies in between. It’s a sad story; we’ve become a corporate society run by spreadsheets and email. I don’t want to slam Microsoft for this, they're in the same boat wandering around the ocean of innovation hoping to find a gem to latch onto. Neither has IBM after downsizing again and webifying its processes been able to kick start serious innovation there either. So what is it th ...
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MCAD and EDA Oligopolies |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
3/31/2007 10:04 AM
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In my first Cyon blog entry on March 2, 2007, I mentioned that I would
occasionally offer comments on engineering software, particularly for Mechanical
CAD (MCAD) and Electronic Design Automation (EDA). On March 9, the blog entry
related to the recent passing of pioneers in MCAD and EDA. Today it might be
useful to take a moment to compare these two software industries in general,
especially the oligopolies that seem to dominate each.
In MCAD, one usually identifies four vendor companies whose worldwide revenues now
make up a huge percentage of the entire MCAD software industry: Autodesk, Dassault
Systemes, UGS and PTC. Each enjoys reported annual sales near or well-above one
billion U.S. dollars.
In EDA, observers usually refer to the “Big 3” vendors: Cadence, Synopsys and
Mentor Graphics. Both Cadence and Synopsys revenues are well over a billion
dollars per year each, ...
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Climate Change -- Danger and Opportunity |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
3/22/2007 3:26 AM
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On the heels of my March 9, 2007 blog entry, lamenting the passing of two pioneers in MCAD/CAE and EDA, respectively, comes the news of the passing of John Backus at age 82, the creator of FORTRAN. As the early engineers and programmers of my generation recall, FORTRAN was among the first "high level computer programming languages" that allowed us to avoid machine coding. Many’s the late night of university thesis research and related software development, when we gave thanks to Mr. Backus of IBM.
But today I want to depart from MCAD and EDA briefly, to comment on the advent of Spring, the rising awareness of climate change, and finally doing something about it!
For example, while Applied Materials here in Silicon Valley sports over a thousand seats of commercial MCAD/CAE software, employing “virtual prototyping” to help design semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the company made other news on March 17, 2007, by announcing at its annual shareholde ...
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Pioneers in MCAD/MCAE and EDA |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
3/9/2007 12:00 PM
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In my first blog item on March 2, 2007, I indicated that topics related to both MCAD/MCAE and EDA would occasionally be mentioned in future blog entries. In reflecting on the current state of these two related industries, I realized that two authentic pioneers who helped advance the state-of-the-art were lost to us in recent months. Indeed, Dr. Jason R. Lemon and Dr. A. Richard Newton both passed away within a week of each other as 2006 ended and 2007 began.
Dr. Jason R. Lemon was a bona fide pioneer in Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering (MCAE). Still serving as CEO of International TechneGroup Incorporated (ITI), Milford, OH, Dr. Lemon passed away on December 27, 2006 after a decades-long battle with cancer. He was 71 years old. In addition to starting ITI in 1983, Dr. Lemon earlier founded Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) in 1967, as an outgrowth of his work at the University of Cincinnati. SDRC was ultimately merg ...
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First blog entry for Russ - a brief introduction |
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Russ Henke
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By Russ Henke on
3/2/2007 6:15 AM
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It's a pleasure to have become part of the Cyon Research team, as of the end of February 2007. For those who may have missed the press release, you may go to:
http://cyonresearch.com/News/tabid/58/newsid382/99/mid/382/Cyon-Research-Adds-Distinguished-Analyst/Default.aspx
In the weeks and months ahead, I will try to share some thoughts that relate to COFES and COFES attendees. While issues surrounding MCAD and MCAE will naturally arise, I may also introduce topics from the world of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), since both mechanical and electronics are parts of my corporate and consulting backgrounds. I must confess that most of my experience these days focuses on business, management and marketing issues related to these disciplines, rather than technical details surrounding software and hardware feat ...
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