As the need for businesses to cut costs intensifies, technologies that shed light on the inner workings of supply chains have been fast-tracked as the weaponry of choice against the slowing economy.

Vendors such as Saltare Inc., webMethods Inc., i2 Technologies Inc., Vizional Technologies Inc., and QAD Inc. are rushing to market with products and partnerships aimed at making the supply-chain systems and processes, which are often shrouded behind company walls, more visible.

A more comprehensive view of the supply chain allows businesses to trim inventory, streamline logistics, and optimize the efficiency of their work forces as they gain a competitive advantage.

"Some of the companies that have showed resiliency to the economic downturn are good examples of companies that had put in supply-chain [technology] ahead of time," said Bob Parker, an analyst at Boston-based AMR Research. "The companies that have really been hurt are those that did not have supply-chain visibility."

Last week, Saltare and business-to-business integration pioneer webMethods announced an alliance to provide a single solution for integration and collaboration across disparate platforms. Meanwhile, Qiva added to its supply-chain visibility arsenal when it acquired Capstan last week, and SCM (supply-chain management) leader i2 Technologies has tapped Vizional Technologies to provide the distributed inventory synchronization component for i2's CRM (customer relationship management) solutions.

In addition, QAD, an ERP (enterprise resource planning) company in Carpinteria, Calif., is scheduled to announce this week a hosted application for supply-chain visualization designed to deliver real-time visibility of inventory to manufacturers.

Many industry stalwarts, including Ford Motor Co., Barnes & Noble Inc., Hershey Foods Corp., General Electric Co., Subaru, Eveready Battery, and Swedish furniture retailer Ikea, have deployed various solutions to streamline supply-chain operations.

Hershey announced this month that it will expand its logistics supply-chain solution to a new distribution facility in California and is considering other distribution facilities. Barnes & Noble this month announced that it has implemented i2 SCM offerings to reduce inventory and costs at its distribution center.

The burst of user interest in supply-chain visibility shows little sign of slowing. The ARC Advisory Group released a study this month estimating that the SCM market will more than quadruple to US$518 million by the end of 2005, growing at an annual rate of 33 percent. Users are seeing profound results from technologies that offer a bird's-eye view into their supply chains.

Plasti-Line, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based corporate signage company, jolted its delivery schedule and shrunk its head count well in advance of the current slowdown, thanks to a tighter, more visible supply chain.

"There weren't any significant layoffs because we had already brought our head count down," said Nathan Bretscher, director of corporate process and information improvement at Plasti-Line. The streamlined supply chain also meant Plasti-Line was well-positioned to weather the current slowdown when orders decreased, Bretscher said.

Plasti-Line has implemented Atlanta-based SynQuest's software to graphically model any manufacturing process to optimize plans based on specific costs, revenue, cycle time, and on-time delivery objectives.

Eighteen months ago, the company had an on-time delivery rate of less than 50 percent, Bretscher said. Now Plasti-Line is shipping

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