November 1997 • Volume 7 • Number 11
Putting On My Horned Hat
By Tom Inglesby
A little devil's advocate work. One of the
interesting issues of our time is how to get a software
company that wants to sell you everything to agree to sell
you only what you need/want and then interface or integrate
it to an existing or new system from vendors considered
direct competitors. For example, a multi-plant company might
need specific functionality at a process facility, different
capabilities at packaging and distribution operations, and
still other features at a factory that does assemblies,
molds plastics or cuts metal. Add to this a requirement for
strong business software at corporate headquarters, sales
automation systems for multiple district offices, and
perhaps special applications necessary to integrate
subsidiary companies into the parent firm's system and you
get very complicated very quickly.
Although several of the big name vendors will argue that their systems can accommodate all these sites with no problem, the one-size-fits-all approach has been discredited at many companies. Thus the "best of breed" idea has become the dominant methodology, it seems, as companies find specific needs require specific applications. Some mid-sized vendors are selling the notion that a plant- or facility-level system — sort of a mini-ERP — can be the answer if it is closely integrated, usually at the data level, with a larger package at corporate. Here is where the lines can get blurry and the edges soft.
Who performs that integration now becomes the question. Is it left up to the purchaser? A fourth-party systems integrator or consultant? The prime ERP vendor or the plant-level provider? Or do we go back to the tried and true, albeit inefficient, islands of automation theory and forget the integration entirely?
This is particularly troublesome in what has been called "the mid-range." I place that term in quotes because the definition varies so greatly depending on who is defining it. Like "middle-class voters," it is whatever segment the speaker wants to appeal to at the moment. For no particular reason, let's consider this market to be companies with annual revenue between $50 million and $500 million. It is represented by second- and third-tier suppliers, mass producers of moderate cost and commodity products, job shops, custom make-to-order and engineer-to-order companies.
A prime example is the contract electronic manufacturing segment that supplies populated boards for computer assemblers such as Sun, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. In recent travels, I have been in a half-dozen such facilities and, after a while, the shop floors all look alike. The surface mount technology (SMT) insertion equipment, the QA (quality assurance) test benches, the robotic assembly stations and the burn-in facilities all indicate that this is a capital-intensive business, but one that has a fairly well-known entry threshold. One might think that a system integrator somewhere has copyrighted a turnkey SMT company — just add money and a static-resistant floor.
In cases like this, where the production approach is nominally the same at many companies, the business tool requirements should be uniform as well. But are they? Competition, more than technology, will determine what business systems provide the best benefits. After all, if the equipment is off-the-shelf, the competitive advantage has to be found elsewhere. In many cases, these companies, which tend to be young and growing rapidly, find themselves pushed to install systems compatible with those of their major customers. That can lead to real confusion when those major customers all have different systems.
Another scenario occurs when companies have been seduced by the siren song of "big systems solve all problems." Is SAP's R/3 right for a company that is having problems implementing QuickBooks? Can the systems integrators trying to bring Oracle, Baan and SAP products to the mid-sized companies of the world succeed when their hourly rate might surpass the weekly income of the MIS manager? Are they willing to quote a guaranteed implementation cost up front and then stick around out back when the job is going south?
Bill McSpadden, top analyst and curmudgeon at Plant-Wide Research, reports, "A few astute individuals are beginning to refer to ERP as an MRP system used as an integrated backbone for information management. Let's face it, MRP isn't a four-letter word." This is, of course, especially true when all you really need is MRP. So buy MRP from a vendor that does MRP best for your environment, call in the system integrator of your choice to have that system implemented, then sit back and challenge the ERP vendors to integrate with it, instead of the other way around.
Horned hat is now off.
|
Sitting in the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., trying to access my company e-mail over the NPC computer system, I realized there are a lot of things that we come to accept and forget how to use. Once our personal workstation or PC is just right, we rarely worry about the settings. My laptop gets right into the company's server via modem, but what is the DNS or whatever I need to use to get in there from a different system? A learning experience: Carry the keys — your settings — with you when you travel. Otherwise, like me, you could spend a lot of time looking at a blank screen if you have to use someone else's computer. |
Tom Inglesby has been observing manufacturing technology for 20 years, interpreting it for magazine readers and acting as a conduit for ideas. He welcomes feedback, rumors and facts at .
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