Many companies in the manufacturing industry mainly think of investing in machinery and production plant to improve efficiency. However, often cost-effective process improvement can be achieved with the existing production plant if manufacturing execution systems are used purposefully. Sven Klein-Herzbruch reports. Executing projects in Asia-Pacific is not new to most global engineering and contracting (E&C) companies. As in other parts of the world, the industry has been active in the region for decades. Fluor, for example, has executed around 1000 projects in Asia-Pacific during the past 50 years. As material and service costs rise, municipalities find it increasingly difficult to provide public safety and quality services within the constraints of a limited budget. Instead of responding by either raising taxes or cutting programs, Graham Richard, mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, has pursued a more innovative solution. Seeking to both improve efficiency and offer his constituents superior service, he borrowed the techniques of Six Sigma -- a data-driven quality improvement methodology originally developed by industry -- and applied them to his city's government. The recent development and integration of high-value, industry-specific e-business solutions is designed to reduce customer inventories, streamline pricing procedures and capacity utilisation, and condense cycle times. And, as Sean Ottewell reports, projects in oil, gas and petrochemical industries throughout the Asia region are among the first to benefit. Building Management Systems have made tremendous advances in the past 10 years. Having a system program for remote reading and management of M-Bus networks now makes everything possible. The Profibus Users' Organisation recently presented its new PROFINet concept, a vendor-independent communications, automation and engineering model. Elske Meyer reports on one company's approach to providing a PROFINet engineering tool with which automation solutions with distributed intelligence can be configured. Plant2Business, from Ci Technologies, is a suite of products that are designed to integrate the plant floor with business systems. Keith M Bower and Michelle E Touchton examine gauge repeatability and reproducibility.