Manufacturers have faced tough economic conditions during the past few years. They've been forced to trim IT staffs and consolidate business-technology resources and operations. The goal has been to more tightly integrate tech investments with core business goals. Now they're better prepared to handle economic changes, whether positive or negative.

Few industries have been hit harder than textiles. Just ask Ben Holder, VP and CIO at textile provider Unifi Inc. "The challenges have been enormous," he says. Unifi has strived to cut costs without cutting crucial technology services to the company. As part of Unifi's cost-cutting plan, Holder was forced to reduce his IT staff by more than 25%.

Unifi's move to .Net for application development helped improve customer service, CIO Holder says.

Earlier this summer, the company completed a transition from clusters of IBM RS/6000 servers running AIX, the vendor's version of Unix, to less-expensive clusters of Dell servers running a version of the open-source operating system Linux provided by Red Hat Inc. It also cut the number of servers by 30%. Aside from a couple of minor glitches, Holder says, the transition went smoothly. "Our transaction performance has been a lot better," he says. A side benefit: The more-open architecture can be quickly and cheaply redeployed to other areas of the business, if necessary.

As part of Unifi's effort to simplify IT, the company also standardized on Oracle 11i and moved from a hodgepodge of application-development tools to Microsoft's .Net. "The development platform has been very good for us," Holder says. "The speed at which we can prototype and then develop applications has become very fast."

At the same time Unifi was cutting IT costs, the company wanted to improve customer satisfaction. The move to .Net for application development paid off in that regard, Holder says. Unifi had believed it was doing a good job of delivering products to customers on time. However, "we conducted a survey, and they told us something different," he says.

So Unifi used the .Net platform to improve the way the company manages its supply chain. One change included providing customer-service representatives with an application that gives them real-time access to supply-chain data. "Now, when they're on the phone they can give real-time order status and better commit to ship dates. This eliminates customers callbacks," Holder says. "This was a big thing for us, and .Net enables that piece." The improvements increased the company's on-time deliveries by 30%, he says.

The difficult economic times hurt all types of manufacturers, including office furniture maker Herman Miller Inc. Experiencing declining sales, the company, with $1.3 billion in annual sales, focused on improving every area of business technology. It cut IT spending by about 35% by adopting a common technology platform for both hardware and software, consolidating six data centers into two and aiming to reduce its 300 Wintel servers by 30%, says Jeff Kurburski, director of infrastructure services.

The company also bolstered its enterprise-resource-planning systems to provide real-time transactions between Herman Miller and its suppliers. All of the company's plants are now versatile enough to produce orders for individual customers. Its ERP system coordinates sites, parts, people, and equipment throughout the company. Its extranet site, MySign, provides all of the company's major suppliers with real-time links to raw-material and component-parts needs. The system helps Herman Miller provide on-demand delivery of materials only when they're needed on the production floor. The system has reduced manufacturing lead times and ensures on-time delivery of its products, says Richard Russell, director of application development. These changes helped improve the company's gross margin, which increased 1.7% despite a decline of $132 million in sales over the past three years, he says.

Alan Biland, VP and CIO of Snap-on Inc. and president of the company's diagnostics and information group, says recent economic conditions have increased the company's need to prioritize its technology budget to "get the most from the investment." The toolmaker and distributor, which has $2.2 billion in annual sales, has increasingly focused on "high-impact" initiatives that provide the greatest return on investment with the least amount of risk, Biland says.