The Happy Path

I have been involved with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and its predecessors (MRP and MRP II) throughout my professional career, first as a practitioner and later as an solution architect and implementer. In recent years I have also developed an interest in the emergence and adoption of Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) technologies such as the Jive social business software platform. Lately I have been thinking about how E2.0 technologies will change enterprise business processes, with a particular focus on the integration of E2.0 and ERP.

One of the key ERP business processes is Purchasing, a variation of which I have depicted below. If the master data is accurate and complete, and the employees are well trained and equipped and the suppliers cooperate then all should go well. The goods should be requested, ordered, received, inspected, putaway and available for use, without delay. 

In the language of software and ERP we have just described The Happy Path

The challenge is that for even the best run organizations things are not always so happy. There are non-trivial exceptions and problems that arise that need to be dealt with quickly and cost effectively. In some cases the problem scenarios can be anticipated and policies and procedures can be put in place to deal with them. Unfortunately, not all types of problems can be anticipated nor is it cost effective to invest in positioning expert resources throughout the enterprise just-in-case.

In the scenario presented below a problem is found during the inspection process. The inspector would have collected some information, such as a physical measurement, from a sample of the goods received and compared the values with the product specifications. If the difference was greater than the tolerances allowed then the goods would be rejected. In this case two things would happen. A quality notification message or workflow would be generated and sent to the appropriate (pre-determined) expert and the goods would be set aside pending analysis and final disposition.

No matter how much skill and knowledge the particular local expert possesses there will be cases when they will be stumped. Ultimately the goods could be accepted (perhaps under a quality waiver), returned to the vendor, reworked or simply scrapped. Regardless of the disposition there would be delays and higher costs.

So how does E2.0 fit into this scenario?

Imagine an organization with a range of experts scattered around the world. In a typical manufacturing enterprise there would be people in a variety of roles, such as component engineers, buyers, quality inspectors, manufacturing engineers, and production artisans that have knowledge and expertise that is relevant to assessing and resolving non-conformance's. Perhaps the problem has been previously encountered in a sister manufacturing plant and they have a quick rework procedure that they can share. Maybe the specifications and tolerances are too tight for this particular application and the product can be used "as-is" without risk. 

Whatever the outcome social enabled processes can help to resolve exceptions and issues quicker and at a lower cost through enhanced enterprise collaboration. There are real opportunities to integrate social business software solutions and practices with existing enterprise processes and solutions, delivering real business value to the enterprise.