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.
