Four reasons to look at building a control tower for your company   The Control Tower concept has been around for well over a decade, but more recently it has been getting renewed attention. This is being driven by the ever-increasing need for companies to be more responsive, more proactive, and more flexible – even as many companies cope with a level of systems/data complexity that only seems to be getting worse. Control Towers have one very important characteristic that can make them invaluable in confronting that conflict: they allow you to quickly, and relatively cheaply, combine data from ..read more

No, not Emergency Medical Services: an EMS company provides Electronic Manufacturing Services. These companies, which range from some of the largest manufacturing companies in the world down to small, single-facility operations, are responsible for producing many of the electronic products that consumers use each day, as well as the big pieces of infrastructure that power the data centers and networks that businesses and consumers both rely on. It’s a huge industry – estimated at over half a trillion dollars in 2018, and generally profitable[1] — an impressive statement since EMS companies typ ..read more

Building a business case for a major project can be hard (and unfamiliar) work. If it’s your first experience with the process, it can even seem kind of unfair – like finding a batch of calculus problems on an algebra test. It can be hard to make the transition from planning a major project like an SAP S/4HANA migration, that seems to be essential or obviously required, to working out how to pay for it.  How can you be expected to have so much data about other functions in your company?   The problem isn’t so much with the business case process itself, as it is with our (general) lack of educ ..read more

  How do you go about building the business case for a major IT project like migrating to SAP S/4HANA? Lots of companies will be facing this question in the near future, as SAP has announced it will discontinue support for their older ERP product, ECC6, in 2025. The move to S/4HANA is likely to be a much bigger, and more expensive, project than the ECC upgrades that companies have been doing over the last decade and a half. If your company is looking at its migration to S/4 as ‘just an IT project,’ you’re likely to miss out on one of the great performance improvement opportunities of the next ..read more

If your company uses SAP as its ERP system, you’re probably aware that SAP has announced it will stop supporting ECC (the version that most electronics companies are using) in 2025. The new version, S/4HANA, is a true upgrade, in almost every sense of the word: a better user interface, improved functionality, even a completely new database that enables faster performance. At the same time, implementing the new version is likely to be a bigger project than many of the straightforward technical upgrades of the past. So it is understandable that many companies haven’t rushed forward with projects ..read more

If you’ve been working for more than a couple of decades, you remember the frenzy over Y2K. At the end of the last millennium, people were convinced that there would be a global meltdown as millions of computer programs incorrectly handled the transition from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000. When it actually occurred, the transition was almost a nonevent. Some people got the idea that there had never been a problem in the first place, but the truth was that the potential for disaster was avoided by thousands of remediation and mitigation projects around the world.[1] After they had anal ..read more

No disrespect is meant to the folks in IT… what I’m hoping to communicate is the fact that your company’s ERP system is critical to the success of your business, and enough things have changed in the last few years that you need to pay attention to it. Here’s what has happened: SAP – which is used by the majority of large electronics companies – has announced that they will discontinue support for ECC (their older ERP product) in 2025. Even though that is more than half a decade away, companies that wait until just before the deadline will be competing for scarce consulting resources – so it ..read more

As mentioned in my last post[1], over the last decade or so Electronics companies (among others) have installed processes to improve their control over the way that they qualify new suppliers. Regulatory requirements, audits, penalties and the potential for damage to a company’s brand have made it critical that companies do an effective job of validating suppliers’ credentials. Electronics companies in particular have been forced to improve their control over the process of qualifying new suppliers. “Improved control” sounds like a good thing – and it is, for the most part. But the due dilige ..read more

People carry bags of cassiterite (tin ore), coltan, which is used in mobile telephones and computers, and manganese on May 28, 2013 down a hill from the Mudere mine, near Rubaya, some 9 kms from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma. Miners dig 50 meters underground for the minerals before transporting them to a nearby river where they are separated from rocks and sand before being sold to dealers. Mine accidents are common in DR Congo. AFP PHOTO / Junior D. Kannah (Photo credit: Junior D. Kannah/AFP/Getty Images) Several earlier blogs[1] discussed the idea that some blockchai ..read more

(This post is a continuation from two earlier posts, referenced in the footnote.[1]) A consortium approach may be the most practical way to solve another problem that affects the entire electronics industry. This is in the processes that support companies’ environmental compliance programs. Companies that sell electronic products into major markets such as North America, Europe, China, Japan, and Korea, have to comply with relevant laws that place restrictions on hazardous substances and/or require disclosure of their presence above reporting thresholds. Examples of these laws include the EU ..read more