My passion is to help manufacturing companies make good decisions about manufacturing systems and have those systems provide good value the the company. I like to refer to it sometimes as “I try to keep people from doing stupid stuff.” Well today I was too late.
I met with a smaller company today that I have been watching from afar for a while. They have spent WAY TOO MUCH money on a simple application that they want to help them run manufacturing better. This application has some functionality that exists in an old FileMaker Pro database application and the task was to bring forward that functionality and add to it.
The developer they hired to write the new application chose Oracle (the free express version) because that is what they knew. Now the company is between a rock and a hard place because the developer is not done, they are way over budget, the application is not tested yet, and there is more scope they would really like to complete!!!
I was too late! Tune in next post for what I would have done differently…
You would have bought them a white board, right?!!
http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2006/06/forget_sap_run_.html
Bummer. Been in that position before. Never like to see someone spend money on something that did nothing to solve their problem or add any value. Looking forward to hearing what you would have done differently!
Kevin, Good to hear from you! Of course you are thinking LEAN, as you should.
In this case, they probably need a system of some kind, but not the Oracle system they invested in. I will post my thoughts on what I would have done (and may still get a chance to do!) See ya.