Portals driven by factory data are way forward for mid manufacturing market

Web portal technology, associated supply chain event management and fulfilment systems (SCEM), APS (advanced planning and scheduling) and business intelligence (BI), driven by shopfloor systems are the unrelenting ways forward. So says manufacturing management guru, president elect of the esteemed American AEA high tech industry association and CEO of mid market ERP firm Mapics, Dick Cook. The name Mapics hardly conjures up high tech for most, but although the firm’s been quiet of late, that’s precisely the field it now plays in – and that’s where manufacturers need to be turning their attention, he insists. Besides its iSeries (former Mapics XA) flagship for complex engineer-to-order and project work (now going open, zero client and Internet running on Java and J2EE), and its NT/2000-based ‘ERP for extended systems’ (from its PivotPoint acquisition) for high tech industries, it has an extensive and modern line up. Top of the list is overarching APS (also from PivotPoint), CRM (customer relationship management) for mid-market manufacturers (through partners SalesLogix and Access Commerce), a maintenance and calibration suite and an interesting electronic shopfloor management suite. The firm claims that in a down market it’s doing tolerably well, although mostly in the US. In Europe, the UK leads through Mapics’ premier VAR, manufacturing and distribution ERP consulting and implementation specialist OBS, which now also boasts the Mapics team formerly with competitor DCS. Cook insists: “We are serious about Europe.” And it’s a message unsurprisingly echoed by Alain Gauthier, Mapics vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa. And the organisation is now looking as healthy as can be expected in the current climate. It has cut considerable cost, losing 60 people last quarter and going through associated restructuring. Also, it has, like so many others, moved much of its new system code development to India. Cook says the benefits financially will filter through in the remainder of this fiscal year. Meanwhile, since acquiring its portal technology from a failed dot.com partnership, it has implemented a self-service portal internally and for partners – and latterly also users, notably with a knowledge kernel answering most system enquiries. “We’ve found that the 10,000 [telephone] calls a month we used to get [on help desk] have fallen to 7,000 and use of the self-help website has gone up to 100,000 per month as users realise they have a resource they can tap into any time right off their browsers.” Mapics is currently wrestling with a handful of early adopters’ portal systems. Cook says the problem is that so much is possible that portals implementations are currently moving targets. Once the firm and its users have more experience, Mapics will move templated versions into the VAR community, making best practice, rapid install versions available to all. As for the slow take-up generally of web-based ‘collaborative commerce’ he believes it has little to do with security. It’s an issue, he concedes, but the real barriers are the fear factor and an unwillingness to reveal internal problems. “Security is an excuse… They’re hiding behind it. What’s inside the four walls is often anything but elegant – customers get their goods through expediting, but they don’t know that. Manufacturers don’t want to reveal the real world.” But, when it comes, properly implemented portal-based collaborative commerce will transform manufacturers’ operations and efficiencies. Business intelligence and analysis, for example, for the internal and extended supply chain, served seamlessly via the portal, will tear down inter-company and inter-departmental barriers, and rip out associated time, materials, WIP and waste. But Cook warns that getting this right is critical. Business intelligence, like everything else, needs good information – even more so given the potential immediacy of decision making from real time information serving. And that in turn means better shopfloor systems, no mater how basic or sophisticated, according to perceived need. It also means data accuracy – of customer data, BoMs, routings and stock holding – wherever it’s hiding. Mapics’ answer is its Paperless Manufacturing Workplace suite, which Cook says costs around 40% of a mid market manufacturer’s ERP system depending on data collection sophistication and involves a three to six month implementation. Given decent ERP, ROI can be very fast, he insists.