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I read all the time that the “surveys show that ERP systems are the key to improved corporate performance.”

I have a slightly different opinion.

While I believe that standardizing, condensing, purging and streamlining can enhance business performance; I don’t think implementing an ERP system is the cause of all of these changes - and therefore improvements.  I think companies that chose to replace their legacy system with a modern ERP solution, are improving their business in many ways besides focusing on the ERP implementation.  Lets look at some other possible factors:

1. Companies that put in new ERP systems are probably already making money.  Most struggling companies don’t say “lets put in a new ERP, that is our key to turning this thing around.”

2. Companies that put in a new ERP system are improving many parts of their business and the support of a modern, consolidated solution helps in those improvements.

3.   This is just a hunch, but most people in leadership that choose to implement a new ERP system have done it before.  It happens, but I’ll bet it is rare to have the legacy leadership choose to move away from the legacy systems.  More often, there is a change in leadership, ownership, etc. that leads to these changes.

I believe modern systems can definitely have positive affects on the business.  However, I think the positive performance of these companies due to many factors.

There is a debate brewing about wether ERP or the large automation/software vendors like Rockwell, GE Fanuc, Siemens, and Wonderware are going to “win” in the MES space.

I would be curious to hear what everyone thinks about this?

Since creating a blog, and managing our primary website, I am learning more than I want to know about webmaster stuff.

I love Microsoft, we are a Gold certified partner!  However, today I ran into a problem where you cannot FTP files to your webserver if you are using FrontPage extensions.  So, we have been using FrontPage for a long time as our primary web development tool, and now we find ourselves corrupting files by using FTP to transfer files back and forth.

Since the rest of the world uses other web development technologies, the primary way to send these files to your server is FTP.  Now that I am using Elance to help me on my websites, I need to be able to use FTP!

I guess I am going to have to move away from FrontPage (well now it is Expression Web).

Ahhh, the learning stages again….

We once had a MES project with a large medical devices company.  This was a great project, that started well, and then the project sponsor went on vacation.  After a week he did not return, then two weeks, then three….

Then, not at all.

We all (Flexware and the customer) found out the way he had justified the MES project was by using some budget left over from another project.  They certainly needed the MES, and we all knew this was going to be a great solution.  These games get played with capital money sometimes, but this one got some real scrutiny when this guy left the company.  The project manager we were working for (she worked for the sponsor that left) called us and asked us to stop our work immediately.

The big meeting….

So here we are, a small company with this large project, stalled.  The Plant Manager called a meeting and asked us (now this was our problem) how we were going to justify this project.  He said “If you can’t tell me right now how much this project is going save me, we are not going to do it.”  Of course, he meant finish it.  I replied by saying “Justifying MES systems is very difficult and requires good data, great understanding of the problems and opportunities, and will take some time.  I can have the project finished in the amount of time it will take to do the justification.”

After some more flaming hoops, we got to finish the project and it all ended well.  It is a constant reminder that sometimes MES takes vision and faith.  I liken it to on-line banking.  There were probably many “old-school” banks that probably scoffed when someone said “you better get online banking up and running here or you may be out of business.”  “Where is the ROI?  Prove it to me!”, they said.  I hope they took the leap of faith and invested in these improvements, because if not, they may be watching from the sidelines.

Same goes for manufacturing and MES investments.  Sometimes it is ROI, vision, and faith combined that gets these projects done.  Sometimes it is leftover capital budget.

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