SCM 90

My name is Dave, I’ve been a supply chain managment professional for about 8 years as of this writing.  I’ve been wanting to start this blog for some time but had to wait until I got laid off to get it going! 

I call this SCM90 to reflect on the fact that we’re often making 90 degree turns in the SCM industry-paradigm shifts as we try to improve supply chain visibility and cut costs.  I’ll be honest I stole the idea from MoRocca180.  It may be appropriate sometimes to call this SCM180 but trends don’t overall seem to turn that fast. 

So let’s talk about ERPs.  I read a post on logistics.about.com about SAP.  This is the ERP I’ve got the most experience with and speak the best on.  Implementation is a bear!  I’ve seen this several times with several ERPs and to change over you have got to want it bad!  Bad things will happen when you get going, especially if you are a big company.  There has to be commitment from top managment come what may–in particular for SAP because it is such a centralized system. 

My former company was implementing another system and now with the credit crunch is going to have to slow down their time line because right now cash is king.  The advantage to the system they are using is that it’s a decentralized system–so they can cut off implementation after various sections.  Not so with SAP, if you stop half way through you’ll be missing on big time data-hello spreadsheet central and we all know that’s bad news.  Take care all hope to post soon again.