This isn't news to anyone. What is news is how companies are positioning themselves to take advantage of existing, as well as up-and-coming markets.

One of the primary abilities of a well-positioned company is its capacity to squeeze costs out of its system, or rather, reduce costs in the way it does business. Leanness is a must. The scrambling by companies to find the optimum method of achieving this has been referred to by Ann Grackin of Benchmarking Partners Inc. as "desperately seeking strategies." Grackin made this comment recently during the "Maximize Return on Assets with Manufacturing Systems" executive teleconference sponsored by PeopleSoft Manufacturing. The theme of this teleconference was the implementation of new systems to achieve asset optimization, and measuring the results of these projects — a subject close to home for many APICS—The Performance Advantage readers.

And the principle focus of the teleconference would also have rung familiar to our readers: the emergence of enterprise resource planning systems as the tool for the next generation of manufacturing processes. Bruce Richardson of Advanced Manufacturing Research, and a participant in the teleconference, backed up this assertion by saying that ERP, in and of itself, is "becoming an essential supply chain system." ERP is no longer viewed for its use in manufacturing purposes alone, but is now serving as the corporate backbone — affecting back office functions such as purchasing, financial applications and auto management.

But it doesn't end there.

Manufacturers are blazing the Internet electronic commerce trail like no other industry at present. And ERP systems fit comfortably into the facilitation of such electronic enterprise functions. The functionality of these Internet-enabled systems is not only providing people throughout an organization with the ability to perform capable-to-promise or available-to-promise analysis and planning, but also permitting these functions to be opened up to customers to do available-to-promise themselves.

The future potential for manufacturing systems and the Internet is endless. Some of it barely imaginable just five years ago. Today, about the only thing holding back such global functionality is bandwidth. And I wouldn't worry about this being too much of hurdle for much longer. With Bill Gates and others pumping large sums of money into the promise of broadband (Internet via cable instead of phone lines, enabling the passage of information far more quickly than an ISDN line or T1 connection) — you can be assured that we'll all be connected soon.

With all the exciting advances being thrown our way every day, it's easy to get caught up in the technolust for fear of being left behind. But it's important to realize the existence of the many layers within advanced manufacturing systems. The trick is to be knowledgeable of the requirements as well as the functionalities of any system or process before jumping in with both feet. Discover what portions of a system can be most beneficial to you now, while always reserving the option of adding the extra bells and whistles as your business requires. This may sound like conventional wisdom, but the carcasses of those who have ignored such basic tenets can be found in the wake of every industry shakeout.

As you venture forward, don't lose sight of your business' basics when making the necessary moves toward systems solutions for market positioning and advancement.

David Greenfield, editor

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