Outsourcing

To cut costs and improve profitability in response to widening losses, Fila USA said yesterday that it will outsource its distribution capabilities to Ryder Integrated Logistics Inc. in Miami.The Sparks-based footwear and clothing company said it expects the restructuring, which will take effect in May, to save the company about $10 million over five years.About 85 Fila employees and an additional 85 temporary employees work at the company's two distribution warehouses in Point Breeze and Brandon Woods.

Columbia-based U.S. Foodservice and Kohlberg & Company LLC agreed yesterday to transfer the business and related assets of Rykoff-Sexton Manufacturing Division to a newly formed Kohlberg subsidiary.RSMD, which had merged with U.S. Foodservice, reached a long-term supply agreement with Kohlberg. Los Angeles-based RSMD manufactures more than 1,400 food and nonfood products. It currently has annual sales of more than $115 million.By outsourcing its manufacturing plant, U.S. Foodservice is looking to narrow the breadth of its services.

Snyder Communications Inc., a fast-growing Bethesda-based market research group, said yesterday that it has acquired two companies that provide the pharmaceutical industry with sales support and training for $71.6 million in stock.Snyder's acquisitions of closely held Health Products Research Inc., of North Branch, N.J., and Healthcare Promotions LLC, of Middlesex, N.J., are aimed at positioning the company as the leading player in the pharmaceutical outsourcing industry.The move is expected by analysts to boost Snyder's 1998 earnings slightly.

Riding the wave of growth in outsourced drug manufacturing, BioReliance Corp. of Rockville said yesterday that it will build, with help from the state, a new viral production facility about two blocks from its headquarters on Blackwell Road.The site will house BioReliance subsidiary Magenta Inc., a contract manufacturer of gene therapy, viral vaccine and viral cancer therapy products.Mike Thomas, chief financial officer of BioReliance, said the facility will cost between $20 million and $40 million and should be operational next year.

THE CANADIAN Auto Workers union and General Motors Corp. reached an agreement last week on a three-year contact to settle a 20-day strike that had halted auto production in Canada and idled nearly 20,000 workers in the United States and Mexico.Who was the winner in the labor dispute? What did General Motors win? What did the union win? Will the contract help General Motors reduce its industry high production costs and become more competitive?Michael Flynn, Associate director,Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation,University of MichiganI don't think there was a clear winner.

ARMONK, N.Y. -- International Business Machines Corp. said yesterday that it made executive and organizational changes in its sales and services divisions to focus on a single brand and avoid confusion among its customers.The changes are part of an effort by Chairman Louis Gerstner to capitalize on the IBM name and eliminate turf battles between divisions."Clearly this will help -- because the old system did have so much friction," said industry analyst Bob Djurdjevic of Annex Research.IBM will now operate all its global services under the IBM Global Services name, which it currently uses.

Like their co-workers in Baltimore, union workers at General NTCMotors Corp. plants around the country voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new national contract, the United Auto Workers announced yesterday.The three-year contract, covering such issues as wages, job security and fringe benefits, was ratified by 85 percent of GM's hourly and skilled trades workers. It was the widest approval margin of a national contract in more than a dozen years.More than 90 percent of the workers at GM's van plant in Baltimore voted in favor of the agreement Sunday.

With the nation's airlines farming out an increasing amount of maintenance work, the Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to monitor an intricate web of contractors that stretches around the world.Before deregulation of the industry in 1978, airlines did most of their work themselves, making it relatively simple for regulators to examine records and aircraft to ensure that procedures were being followed properly.But now that task is far more complicated than experts predicted even five years ago.U.

LABOR AND MANAGEMENT are well aware the recent 17-day strike that shut down General Motors operations nationwide, including here in Baltimore, was just the latest skirmish in a long, long war. The issue that brings out the brass knuckles is outsourcing -- the practice of having outside non-union companies supply component parts at prices much cheaper than high-wage in-company plants can match.The United Auto Workers union considers this practice a threat to its very survival. Its membership today is just over 800,000 -- half of what it was in the 1970s.

Texas strike looms for LockheedLockheed Martin Corp. said yesterday that a 300-member machinists union local at its Abilene, Texas, facility has rejected a final offer and that the workers are working without a contract. The union has authorized a strike but operations have been normal, said a Lockheed spokesman.The Abilene plant, which has laid off nearly half its employees in the past year, makes parts for the F-16 fighter, the Tomahawk cruise missile and other aerospace programs. Union officials were not available for comment.

Outsourcing - going outside your business for services you need - is one of the best ways for a small business to get ahead. But using outsourcing to your best advantage does not happen automatically. Some outsourcing relationships can fail, costing your business time and money while a new relationship is established. The key to outsourcing success for a small business is to go about it professionally. Out of pure necessity, small businesses started outsourcing long before there was even a name for it. An outside specialist can do tasks including payroll, building Web sites, managing computer networks, handling telephone sales and credit card processing.

BOSTON - I finally drew the line at a dinner invitation. My husband wanted to try a much-touted restaurant where they present you with a platter of raw foods and a hot pot. The prospect of this adventure in dining didn't exactly thrill me. If I want to cook my own food, I answered rather testily, I'll eat at home. Until then, I had drifted along with the do-it-yourself economy. I bused my own lunch trays. I booked my own movie tickets. I checked myself in at hotel kiosks. I even succumbed when an upscale seafood restaurant expected me to swipe my credit card through a handheld computer as if I were in a supermarket.

Washington Street Books will hold a free Comic Book Day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at 131 N. Washington St., Havre de Grace. All patrons of the event, designed to promote reading and comics, will receive a free comic book. Appearances by local celebrities will also be featured. Guests will be in the store from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Appearances at the comic book event will include: Greg Cox, known for his Star Trek novels and books based on the comic series 52. Gale Heimbach, comic and magazine illustrator, for Green Hornet and Cinefantastique.

A coalition of Indian-American business owners headquartered in Howard County is expanding into an office building it purchased on Centre Park Drive near Route 108 in Columbia. The growth of Intercontinental Export Import, an international plastic recycling firm, and Prism Microsystems, a software security firm that has 12 facilities worldwide, could together add up to 80 new jobs in the county during the next year, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman announced at a news conference in the firms' jointly owned headquarters building.

ATLANTA -- Despite the harsh partisanship that had begun to infect politics by the 1990s, there was at least one tenet about which mainstream Democrats and Republicans agreed: Globalization is good. The wonders of free markets have been touted by Democrats Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence Summers as well as Republicans Carlos Gutierrez and Henry M. Paulson Jr. Belief in the glories of global markets is widely shared - a civic religion, especially among the chattering classes. As with most religions, however, its miracles are exaggerated.

LINVILLE, N.C. -- Globalization seems like a nice idea - if it didn't make people insane. Although there are no such studies that I know of, a graph might show that Americans have been consuming increasing quantities of antidepressants in direct correlation to the growth of corporate call centers overseas. Want your cable fixed in Appalachia? Hold one moment while we connect you to Bangalore. Don't get me wrong. I love all peoples great and small, but I do not want to talk about my bad Internet connection with someone in Bombay named Kapil pretending to be Karen.

Working the sales floor at a retailer won't make you rich, but thousands of people manage to make a living doing it. Yet the announcement yesterday by Circuit City that it terminated 7 percent of its better-paid hourly employees and will replace them with inexperienced workers who earn less is the latest example of how difficult it is becoming to make retail sales a career, some industry consultants said. The growth in retail employment has lagged behind overall job growth in recent years in part because Internet shopping has cut into the demand for sales associates.

A Columbia Association committee is calling on the association's board of directors to turn down proposed restrictions on the outsourcing of work to foreign countries. A board member is pushing such restrictions as a way to support the local economy. Meanwhile, the oversight committee will review the homeowner association's acquisition policy to see if any changes should be made in the association's policy on outsourcing. "The real issue was ... that we need to address the process and the issue of acquisition," said Cynthia Coyle, acting chairwoman at Thursday's meeting.

Opening MaggieMoo's holds a grand opening today of a new ice cream store at the Westfield Annapolis mall. Alliances Hanger Orthopedic Group Inc. announced that the Bethesda-based company has entered into a network agreement with Great-West Healthcare. Effective Tuesday, its subsidiary, Linkia LLC, will manage the orthotic and prosthetic care network for Great-West, providing a nationwide network of Hanger-owned patient care centers and independent facilities. New contract Read Street Sound and Video has been awarded an open end audio/video production contract by the Army Corps of Engineers.

LAST WEEK'S ISSUE -- A firefighter cadet training program for Arundel High School students has been canceled for the coming school year, mainly because of declining interest. The fire department and the school system decided to suspend the program for a year while the curriculum is revamped. But a representative of the Anne Arundel County Volunteer Firefighters Association said the decision was premature and made without input from the association, which had pushed for the creation of the program.