Re: Is ERP dead? -- MIDRANGE-L

Wynn,

In a message dated 5/30/00 9:23:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wynn@praxis.net 
writes:

> ERP Dead? Not the concept? It will never die. Most of the logic behind it
>  has been around for decades though. They just came up with a new acronym
>  and wa-la: MILLIONS & MILLIONS of dollars in sales.

No, the _concept_ is based upon APICS rules.  It will not die.  
Unfortunately, nobody seems capable of embracing those rules from a software 
standpoint and standing by them.  How software vendors cannot take literally 
BILLIONS of dollars between them and not come up with a single "one size fits 
all" ERP package is beyond me.  I worked on a package that was close, but it 
was on a "proprietary" (and now dead) platform.  Manufacturers figure in as 
well, though --  they insist on saying that "our industry is different from 
all the others" while still sending representatives to APICS meetings.

>  But God, I hope the vendors die. Maybe not all of them. Just J.D. Edwards.
>  Their OneWorld product sucks to high heaven. And don't anyone tell me I'm
>  nuts because I'm living it right now. A year ago I thought Microsoft had
>  the buggiest software in history. Unh-huh. J.D. Edwards has them beat by
>  light years. I love Microsoft now.

I must disagree here.  While the vendors' software performs in a substandard 
manner, it _DOES NOT_ crash your computer like Windoze does.

>  Tell you what though, I've really come to appreciate the AS/400 and its
>  "ancient" methodology, i.e., RPG, CL, DDS, & DB2. I thought I was a
>  dinosaur, and that I was missing out on these new ERP packages, with their
>  120k salaries (remember SAP?). No more. Like someone else said, there is
>  nothing IMHO that can top a well written piece of software on the AS/400.
>  It is truly a beautiful thing to see. 

Problem is, you'll have a hard time finding a well written piece of 
application code commercially available on the AS/400.  There are a few good 
in-house app's, but _those_ people aren't selling...

>  It's just very sad that, in most cases, management doesn't get it.

Indeed.

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do.  
Doing it is the hard part." -- H. Norman Schwarzkopf
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---