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Manufacturing Online Portal
New online manufacturing portal community unveiled at Corporate Visitation Program breakfast
KITCHENER - Just as yesterday's Corporate Visitation Program Breakfast presented news that local manufacturers were optimistic in spite of facing challenges, another online innovation - to improve communication and productivity - in the manufacturing sector was unveiled.
The event marked the unveiling of a new Manufacturing Innovation Network (MIN) online manufacturing portal community for this region, conceived by City of Kitchener staff and IGLOO Inc., and championed by the Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium (EMC).
EMC is Canada's largest manufacturing consortium while IGLOO, which just last week moved its headquarters to downtown Kitchener, is a local firm specializing in creating online portals.
MIN's focus is to become a portal community and social networking hub for members of the manufacturing sector to facilitate collaboration and share best practices with one another. MIN will also help businesses self promote and connect with other local suppliers, rather than shopping halfway around the world for raw materials or services.
This new focus on MIN is actually part of a longer-term vision the city has for assisting the local manufacturing sector in innovating and remaining competitive in the future. The city's 2007-2010 Economic Development Strategy focuses on six key areas, among them supporting of manufacturing competiveness.
"We are well aware of the challenges and problems facing the manufacturing sector, and most especially in recent months and years," said Mayor Carl Zehr. "In terms of focusing on the key area of supporting manufacturing competitiveness, the key priority of city staff is to establish a mass collaboration network among our manufacturers."
For some time, City staff has been investigating the possibility of establishing the Manufacturing Innovation Network. This initiative with IGLOO Inc. is aimed at increasing communication best practices among manufacturers. It is meant to help manufacturers promote themselves better and connect more easily - in a more cost-effective and time-effective manner to increase productivity, enabling them to take one step closer to ensuring their own long-term economic success.
"Just as innovation, creativity and optimism are the hallmarks of the manufacturing sector's spirit, the new Manufacturing Innovation Network, or MIN, is expected to become a vital tool in manufacturers' future marketing and daily operating machinery," added Zehr.
In all, 68 per cent of participants in this year's visitation program expressed an interest in participating in MIN.
Dan Latendre, CEO of IGLOO Inc., said IGLOO was originally created in 2003 to develop a global platform for creating easy-to-use online communities for the Centre for International Governance Innovation, better known as CIGI.
"I am very excited to be leading IGLOO at a time when organizations are quickly recognizing the value of corporate social networking", said Latendre, "providing tools to employees that improve cross-team collaboration and free untapped knowledge across departments or between branch offices."
Today, CIGI is a customer of the new private-sector company IGLOO, which oversees about 200 online communities with 125,000 users.
Initiatives like MIN, said Latendre, are extremely innovative, taking corporate networking a step further, going beyond corporate firewalls and enabling collaboration within specific industry sectors and across regions and job functions. A pilot steering committee has been set up to guide and direct the new local manufacturing innovation network, comprised of local government, manufacturers, manufacturing associations and academic representatives. Currently, it is mapping out its business plan, strategy and conducting a needs assessment. The Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium (EMC) will financially support the creation of MIN.
Al Diggins, president and general manager of the EMC said, "Nobody knows the issues affecting manufacturers, better than the manufacturers themselves."
Through the development of our next generation website, EMC is supporting the Manufacturing Innovation Network platform to build the collective expertise of industry. By connecting the region's manufacturers with each other, as well as community partners, government and other stakeholders, this community will provide industry with an opportunity to become more competitive, more responsive and more collaborative in building competitive advantage across all sectors.
IGLOO provides a secure online corporate social networking platform that helps organizations create more productive connections with people, processes and information across organizations and extended customer and partner networks. IGLOO currently serves 200 online communities and more than 100,000 users, including the CIGI research network, enabling them to share valuable knowledge, ideas, expertise across Canada and around the world. For more information, visit www.igloosoftware.com.
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