ManufIT.com

I am currently the president of Flexware Innovation. Along with a partner I helped found Flexware in 1996. Flexware was founded as an Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) integration company, and that is still our principal business today. It has long been my passion to educate manufacturing operational, quality, and IT professionals about the benefits of Manufacturing Execution Systems. MES is a very complex space, requiring the coordination of many disciplines within a manufacturing operation.

Throughout nearly 12 years of implementing MES systems, I have seen some very good projects and some very poor projects. This blog is dedicated to helping manufacturing professionals make good decisions with regard to manufacturing IT projects.

I believe there is such a thing as “administrative IT” and such a thing as “manufacturing IT”. The admin IT professionals are typically focused on financial systems, infrastructure, and business level systems. In contrast, manufacturing IT professionals (if they exist), are focused on shop for user interfaces, data collection systems, automation integration, traceability solutions and digital dashboards. These two disciplines differ almost as much as two different disciplines in the medical field. You wouldn’t want your foot doctor doing your heart surgery, would you? It is typically rare that your IT professional that maintains your e-mail system is capable of creating mission-critical solutions for your manufacturing operations.

So this blog is dedicated to educating manufacturing quality, IT, operations professionals and the discipline of Manufacturing IT. Enjoy!

A little bit about me:

I am a proud graduate of Purdue University with a degree in Electrical Engineering Technology. I used this degree to get my first job at Indiana Automation Inc. (IAI). After a few years as an automation engineer, I went to work selling Wonderware software at Advanced Interface Solutions, Inc. (AISI). AISI is now Wonderware Central. After six short months at AISI, I started Flexware Integration with Jason Toshlog.