My specialty is working at the strategic level with upper management to establish solid direction for the use of information technology to achieve their business objectives. That often involves working as a Consulting CIO to help them realize what the latest technologies can do for them. I have spent most of my time in consulting helping clients identify those feasible computer applications which redefine the organization and enable it to achieve quantum leaps, and then marshalling the resources to see them implemented quickly. I have selected the following clients to illustrate the breadth of industries in which I have consulted since 1977:

• Southern Champion Tray Company produces custom boxes for everything from perfume bottles to diskette boxes for the computer industry. The critical application here is efficiently managing lots of custom orders for fast service and profitability.
• Corley Manufacturing produces a well-known line of saw mill machinery and complete saw mills now in use all over the world. They must efficiently design and manufacture for hundreds of thousands of parts and replacement parts and get them to the field promptly.
• Chattanooga Tufters Supply Company is highly innovative. They reengineer older machinery to run faster and maintain close relations with tufters all over the world. Innovation and efficient production of thousands of parts is critical to follow-on sales. Nimbleness is a virtue as the price and supply of used machinery ebbs and flows.
• Chattanooga Glass Company (acquired by Sewell Plastics) produced a wide variety of glass containers for foods and beverages. Here the challenge was to efficiently manage the very rapid flow of orders into shipped product.
• Chattem, Inc. produces mainly cosmetic items and buys and sells new product lines and, sometimes, the manufacturing as well. The company can drastically alter its product portfolio and its geography from year to year. Nimbleness is essential here: an information infrastructure to support quick and constant change.
• Siskin Steel, was recently sold to Reliable, had gravitated along with the competition from just supplying thousands of steel items cut to varying lengths into the manufacture of custom shapes by various cutting and shaping methods involving numerical control.
• Crates Leather Company produces one of the finest lines of saddles in the world. The key role of information technology here is in the marketing and customer service areas. Here the critical application was knowing the market better.
• The World Carpets finishing plant is a medium size operation, which shipped to a network of contract warehouses. Here the breakthrough to smooth production scheduling was found not in the plant but in providing online order entry and inventory control to all the independent warehouses from a central database. By drastically reducing expedited orders, World Carpets greatly increased sales out of the same warehouses.
• While Olan Mills, Inc. is a large family firm with studios nationwide, its highly automated photo-finishing operations fit the medium manufacturer profile. Innovative automation of manufacturing combined with a very powerful order tracking system enables Olan Mills to count its customers in the millions.
• Nissan Motor Manufacturing Company built the largest vehicle assembly under one one roof anywhere worldwide in Smyrna, Tennessee.  Three extremely automated assembly lines were supported by a massive order system and very innovative production planning systems which enabled them to make a accept order specifications within half the lead time of the competition. This was a precursor of make to order manufacturing. With so many computers involved, they asked our help in measuring the cost per transaction of the supporting business systems, so that they could verify and reward continuous cost reductions.