WHM Tip for Consultants

I much appreciate the various tips & solutions provided by BPCS consultants 
on this list ... those of you who are into adding applications that interface 
to BPCS or other ERP, might like to familiarize yourself with the Wiring 
Harness Manufacturing Association http://www.whma.org in which there are 100 
manufacturing members many of which are infants in the implementation of any 
ERP because there is the widespread sense that WHM is a nitch market that has 
not been properly served by ERP vendors.

The association now has a committee of approx 20 manufacturers to define what 
it is that WHM need that the APICS model failed to include, then work towards 
lobbying software vendors to fill the nitch gap ... I was at the November 
meeting & was very impressed.  The latest model is focused on seeing a 
marriage between Design Engineering software and e-ERP which currently do not 
talk to each other.

Design Engineering packages do things like mesh inspection points in middle 
of production with routings, validate that customer specifications are 
electrically sound, track tooling, and a huge array of manufacturing & supply 
chain issues that we generally have to heavily modify ERP to satisfy.

By choice, WHMA now has only one conference per year and April 16-19, 2000 are
the dates for our biggest and best convention and trade show to date.

Hotel room reservations for the next conference =  Phone: 407.827.3364
or 1.800.WYNDHAM and mention WHMA.

I am basically suggesting that consultants whose area of speciality includes 
front ending nitch markets to ERP, or anything else relevant, might like to 
be aware of this hunger for something that current ERP vendors have managed 
to ignore, and consider either the nitch market's annual convention, or make 
a presentation to one of the committee meetings.

This is currently a hot topic at many WHM because the Y2K fix has forced top 
executives to see many of the inadequacies of current ERP offerings & launch 
a quest for something better.

Al Macintyre
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