DATAForge will be presenting at the FMMUG 2009 Best Practices to be held October 11th and 12th. This years event is to be hosted by Purdue University. The mission of the Facilities Management Maximo User Group (FMMUG) is to provide a forum for Maximo users in the facilities management industry to exchange information, methods and experiences. This exchange of information is designed to optimize the use of Maximo’s capabilities. For more information visit http://www.fmmug.org.

DATAForge will also be presenting on behalf of the Automotive Industry Content Standardization council at the 10th Annual ECCMA ISO 8000 Data Quality Conference on October 27th, 28th and 29th. This years event will be held at the historic Hotel Bethlehem in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Whether you are new to data quality or a seasoned professional, this conference will provide you with a unique opportunity to discuss the latest trends and check out the latest technology. If you have an interest in improving the accuracy of your vendor, material, service or asset masters, improving the descriptions in your ERP software or buy-side or sell-side catalogs or if you are looking for solutions to data integration challenges, the ECCMA conference is the place to be! Please visit the ECCMA website for more information.

Buyer/supplier information synergy to me means that at any given time, if a piece of data is needed to complete a product description or a piece of data is needed to place a product or service order that is not available in your ERP applications, your suppliers are willing and able to provide the piece of data automatically without human intervention.

That probably sounds ridiculous.

This situation probably sounds more familiar:

1.) New equipment is installed
2.) The recommended spares list is loaded directly into ERP
3.) The new equipment malfunctions, goes down
4.) Production stops
5.) The maintenance department attempts to replace failed component only to find there is no inventory
6.) Maintenance frantically calling machine builder/suppliers/plant engineering to identify the failed component

This may be an over simplification or might not be something your organization can relate to, but, there are several types of technology and business process that enable prevention of this scenario and other problems that plague the large manufacturers supply chain.
—a common unified schema or dictionary used by all commercial organizations to label product information (eOTD)
—a common method of transmitting this information directly into ERP prior to the need arising to replace a component (xml)
—develop a supporting business process to ensure the needed information is requested (people)

As manufacturers/suppliers/BPO providers we all need to work together to move to a common method of requesting, transmitting and receiving the information we need to keep our operations running.