Demand flow and lean to be reborn in Oracle

Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft, and thus also JD Edwards, may well eventually result in better deals for mid to large scale manufacturers than they or potential users realise. Quite apart for Oracle’s well publicised Project Fusion – evolving and bringing together its now wide range of ERP and supply chain suites – the company has acquired a wealth of lean and demand flow technology (DFT), and most important, the consultancy to go with it. Late last year, before the acquisition, PeopleSoft launched what it had been talking about for more than a year: an end-to-end demand-driven manufacturing suite in PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne 8.11 plus an implementation methodology, tools and services based on lean/agile thinking. This was about several important aspects: adopting lean and agile thinking top to bottom, with a road map for adapting processes and IT; new software tools for business transformation and ERP not based on MRP or its derivatives; and driving that with extended lean and flow consulting from the JCIT practice PeopleSoft acquired in 2003. Add that to PeopleSoft’s and now Oracle’s Internet-based IT infrastructure and the latter’s stated intentions around services-orientated architecture (SOA) and Java, and its looking very interesting for Oracle users in the very near future. Peter Møller Sørensen at JCIT says: “For us this is an exciting time. As you perhaps know Oracle built their lean functionality around DFT a couple of years ago [and] PeopleSoft 8.11 is also built on DFT. “We have every indication that the commitment towards DFT in Oracle becomes even stronger now. As we speak we have discussions with Oracle on how to go forward.” A lot could happen in the next couple of months.