Bombardier’s visit to the Paris Air Show has proved fruitful, with large orders placed for both its CSeries and Global Business aircraft.

Most notably, with an order of up to 30 CS300 aircraft, Korean Air will become the new jet’s launch customer in Asia.

Korean Air, South Korea’s flagship airline, signed an agreement to acquire 10 Bombardier CS300 aircraft, with an additional 10 options and 10 purchase rights. The two companies signed a letter of intent following several months of negotiations, and made the announcement at the show today.

Oil and gas exploration company Premier Oil has raised its interest in the UK onshore oilfield Wytch Farm by 17 per cent.

Premier will pay current operator BP $96 million for the additional interest, which will take its total stake up to approximately 30 per cent.

Wytch Farm is currently producing approximately 13,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Located in Dorset around 17 miles from Poole, the oilfield comprises three separate oil reservoirs that lie under Poole Harbour and Poole Bay.

Rolls-Royce has signed an agreement to be the exclusive engine provider for an enhanced version of the Airbus A350-1000 aircraft.

Rolls-Royce will supply the new higher thrust version of the Trent XWB, incorporating new high temperature turbine technology, increased engine core size and advanced fan aerodynamics.

Toyota has announced that it expects its North American vehicle production levels to return to 100 percent in September.

Production is recovering earlier than originally anticipated following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Eight of the company’s 12 North American-built models returned to 100 percent production on 6 June.

“After September we will focus on making-up lost production as much as possible,” said Steve St. Angelo, executive vice president of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, North America.

International mining group Rio Tinto has now acquired 99.74 per cent of the shares of Riversdale Mining Limited after Tata Steel today allowed its 26.28 per cent stake into Rio Tinto's takeover offer.

Riversdale has hard coking-coal projects in Mozambique and also owns an underground coal mine in South Africa—Zululand Anthracite Colliery. Mozambique is strategically well placed to supply hard coking coal to India and Brazil, where the steel industry is growing and a number of new coal-fired power stations are being built.

The UK’s largest airline, easyJet, has announced that it will open a new base at London Southend Airport from April 2012.

The base will open with three A319 aircraft and over 150 employees, with around 800,000 passengers expected to fly in the first year.

Seventy easyJet flights per week will operate to around 10 different European destinations including Barcelona, Faro and Ibiza. Tickets will go on sale at the end of July this year.

The new base will be easyJet’s eleventh in the UK.

Supply chains have extended right across the globe via the Internet. Scott Klososky explains how to get your message to go further still by making social technologies relevant to your business.

Technology can relieve the increasing pressure on job shops, machine shops and make-to-order manufacturers, but choosing the right system is the major imperative, says Thomas R. Cutler.

Greg Ehemann and Rich Ehemann, Shoptech’s founding partners, have been around job shops their entire careers. While working in a machine shop in Cincinnati, Ohio during the 1980s, Greg and his brother Rich were frustrated that they could not determine whether they were making or losing money on a job.

The best Microsoft Gold Partners consider themselves strategic partners for their clients, not merely technology solutions providers, says Thomas R. Cutler.

The concept of business improvement, whether part of a lean initiative, six sigma, or other continual process improvement methodology, is often one of the metrics or deliverables offered by many Microsoft Gold Partners.