I have been very impressed with Steve Bell and his approach. Check out his website at www.steadyimprovement.com.
Also, you can get his book here: Amazon.com
Last week I met Scott Sorheim over the phone through a mutual friend. He has a company called Lean Technologies, and his product is called “Thrive.”
I really appreciate guys like Scott because they have passion for manufacturing and they are willing to “hang it all out there” and work on solutions.
Scott’s Blog: http://leantech.com/blog/
Lean Technologies Website: http://www.leantech.com/
I recently used Elance to make updates to my blog site. It was a great experience.
There are lots of talented developers in the world just looking for a chance to impress clients and make a decent living at it. On their site, you can search for talent that meets your project needs.
Then, once the keyword searches find the companies (they call them providers) that can fulfill your needs, you can then search by Feedback, Reviews, and Hourly Rate. I personally looked for those with 95% or better Feedback, at least 5 reviews, and an hourly rate up to $20/hour.
I used Candid Software for my first project and was extremely pleased with their work. Someone once said (I think it was in The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman) “Work will get done where work gets done best.” I believe Elance has figured this out and has a great way of getting work done.
A question came up today in the ISA-95 Committee meeting about good scheduling companies. Someone asked if the group new about any good scheduling companies.
Some of these companies (and legacies) came up. This is my no means a comprehensive list of APS companies.
http://www.taylor.com/
http://www.preactor.com/
http://www.jda.com/ - formerly Manugistics
http://www.i2.com/
FactoryTalk Scheduler - formerly from System Modeling Corporation
Visiprise also bought RSS in 2006, but I could not find it on their website. Read Article.
The Cox family also started a new company in 2007 - Dynafact.
