I want to make the argument that the wolf threatening the supply chain is investment in traditional technologies that were primarily designed to improve manufacturing decision making processes by reducing only manufacturing constraints. I feel that there is an opportunity cost to the organization to work on their third or fourth ERP upgrade and look blindly, and only, at analytics from the ERP vendor. Instead, I would like to see companies invest in new forms of analytics to better use existing data. The argument that I want to make here is that the supply chain problem has changed, but we are implementing the same old technologies without stopping to realign against new goals. Here is my argument.

Based on recent research, today, over 90 percent of companies have an enterprise resource planning system and an advanced planning system. These technologies are mature. We are in the evolution phase of user-based enhancements. The consolidation of this industry has served the technology providers well, but has largely stymied innovation. Yet companies are still investing millions of dollars in these upgrades. I feel that many of these technologies are now legacy.

I feel that continued investment in multi-year ERP systems is the big, bad wolf. 

Read Full Article


Keywords: supply chain management IT, supply chain solutions, supply chain systems, ERP, APS, legacy systems