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Innovation and Technology
Plex Manufacturing Blog
The Lego Hand
Topics like quality, efficiency, process and cost can dominate almost any manufacturing conversation. End-customer satisfaction depends on consistent quality and high value; as an industry, we spend billions of dollars annually to implement practices and technologies to make things better....
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Repairing the Clumsy Relationship between People and Technology: Wearables on the Shop Floor at TEDxDetroit
Google Glass, Bluetooth and other emerging mobile and wearable technologies are poised to transform manufacturing practices and how people interact with materials on the plant floor. Imagine pairing Google Glass with RFID tags to create a way for people to see inside boxes and around corners without using their hands....
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The Difference Between Active and Passive Compliance
I had an interesting conversation last week with a company that was evaluating new ERP systems. One of the principal drivers for replacing their old business system is compliance and traceability. Today they use a combination of manual processes and disconnected systems to track material usage, quality, and production activities. ...
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Cloudwashing
Wow have we made progress! It used to be that architectural changes in ERP systems required rewriting the code, but now you can do it by simply editing the web page and issuing a press release. ERP “paradigm shifts,” like the ones from mainframes to minicomputers or host-based to SOA, consumed thousands of software engineers’ efforts and sent the majority of vendors to the ERP graveyard. ...
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Why Put a Software Company in Detroit?
One of the fun things about my job as VP of Strategy is that I get to brag about what we are doing at Plex to friends and acquaintances and occasionally total strangers. But inevitably they will always get around to asking the question – “Why would you put a software company in Detroit?” ...
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R.I.P. Business ByDesign
There was a major brouhaha when word leaked out that SAP was finally burying its ill-fated cloud-based ERP system, Business ByDesign. I assume it must have been a slow news week because no one could really have been surprised....
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Meeting the Challenge of Future Growth Using Two-Tier ERP Strategies
In speaking with industrial, high tech and commercial aerospace manufacturers, a common theme emerges: None of them have the luxury of waiting on reports created over days or weeks because ERP systems are out of step with strategic priorities. Their customers are demanding more responsiveness, more accuracy, and greater speed of quoting and order completion than ever before....
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Big Questions About Big Data
Big data is everywhere. It seems everyone is talking about it, but there’s still so much confusion around it. To top it off, more data is coming in every day, faster than before, and in formats not easily synchronized. Businesses need ways to store it, access it and turn it into a competitive edge. But how?...
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Guest Post: The Turning Tide of Acceptance for Cloud ERP in Manufacturing
Even though cloud ERP has been able to gain traction across most industries and company sizes, manufacturers have been notoriously slow to come on board. Manufacturers were first to utilize ERP itself, but have been somewhat reluctant to move away from what has worked for them in the past. I experienced this firsthand last year when I presented some of my research on cloud ERP to a group of…
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Evolution of the IT Department in the Age of the Cloud
There’s no question that the cloud presents a disruptive technology that inevitably leads to rethinking – and often restructuring – the objectives of internal IT departments. An internal IT department – once considered critical to the success of the business enterprise – has, in many cases, become obsolete....
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