Over the past few weeks I've had a couple of interesting discussions about the introduction of Twitter to Manufacturing. When someone poses a question like this to me, it throws me for a minor loop, because for very basic, practical reasons, it just doesn't seem to apply. More keyboards & data entry on the floor? Not likely. However, a few months ago I wrote this rather breathless item, expounding on a brainstorm regarding the use of YouTube and Twitter in…
Spent time at an industry conference last week (ain't Boston great!), and heard the term SAPanese - that special language SAP users learn when immersed in worlds of Walldorf and their ubiquitous software. It's not unique to SAP - lots of software companies develop their own vocabulary. Heck, IT "geeks" are famous for it - even the various functional units within the business develop their own shorthand, terms to help speed communication with "those in the know". Here are some…
My last post generated some interest, so here's the rest of the examples. Last time, I wrote about the simplistic approach to measure and report on IT value: Is your IT group working on the right things? Are they working on the right things well? Is your IT spend comparable to industry norms? Is your IT spend comparable to other measures of company performance? A bit more detail ... balancing quantitative and qualitative ... (Quantitative) To make sure you have…
This started off as a quick response to a question on LinkedIn Answers ... but I got on a roll ... Here's a simplistic way to measure and report on IT value: Is your IT group working on the right things? Are they working on the right things well? Is your IT spend comparable to industry norms? Is your IT spend comparable to other measures of company performance? A bit more detail ... balancing quantitative and qualitative ... (Quantitative) To…
I met Lora Cecere this evening, well-known AMR analyst for Supply Chain - a good conversation about the deeper potential for supply chain integration technology. The topic: are there bigger benefits here? Is it really only limited to optimization of your own supply chain? Don't get trapped into thinking that the business benefit of supply chain integration is limited to increased visibility - look at the different scenarios. A simplistic view of an integrated supply chain shows all the elements,…
Interesting project that I have to take a deep-dive on this week - has to do with automating a piece of barcode printing software, and integrating it with a newly developed labeling process out in the shop. Project was hitting some significant snags, and I was asked to step in. Here's where hands-on software development skills are a boon and a curse ... The perception is that we're trying to get the forms software to work in a certain way…