THE CUTTING EDGE

| MCM staff

If you were a doctor treating the human body, you would try, as far as possible, to save a diseased limb, not hack it off with abandon. But if you were

Ready to Rumble

| Bill Kuipers

No silver bullet will get you through the peak season by itself The U.S. Air Force trains and equips pilots with the strategy that the only way to prepare

SPLIT PERSONALITY

| MCM staff

An automated e-mail response costs about 25 cents per incident, compared to $1 for knowledge-based self-service, $6 for interactive voice response, $8

Catalog Analysis: Preplanning Merchandising

| Jack Schmid

During the past two months we talked about squinch, or square-inch post-mailing analysis, to help merchants and the creative team understand what is selling

Have It Your Way

| David Pluviose

Instead of having to fumble through layers of pre-designed computer interfaces, you can now customize your warehouse inventory control interface to give

More Layoffs to Lament

| Moira Cotlier

Since Catalog Age first reported on the mass layoffs affecting catalogers in 2001 (Layoffs: Who’s Getting Hit? in the April issue), a number of companies

Don’t Forget Your Gloves

| Timothy Van Mieghem

The faintest ink is stronger than the best memory One site visit brought me to a food distributor’s frozen warehouse in Florida. I had not thought to

Dot.con

| Rama Ramaswami

Long, long ago, there lived a poor farmer whose sole desire in life was to own a cow. After scrimping for many years, he saved up enough money to purchase

Working Gear

| Thomas G. Dolan

Having a conversation with your computer may be possible after all. Industry buzz around this topic has been rampant in recent years, but actual products

HOUSE CALL

| MCM staff

If different tasks proceed at different rates, try to arrange work steps so that the faster process is executed before the slower one If your WMS is building