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CIO Review

Brian R. Lurie, VP & CIO, Gardner Denver Inc.

Brian R. Lurie, VP & CIO, Gardner Denver Inc.

Challenges in Technology in Manufacturing Sector and its Solutions

One of my biggest challenges is the continuing existence of legacy ERP systems and looking for the holy grail of trying to combine those into a single instance. While it’s certainly doable in companies like Oracle and SAP who provide solutions to do that, they do it at great cost, both to the enterprise and great costs in terms of payment to vendors. When one does that, one is really bound by that vendor. They effectively have you over a barrel. One of the opportunities is for somebody to come out with a service ERP offering which is robust enough to support a manufacturing environment. This might allow us to finally get away from the hardware and the very expensive software and be more agile.

Other thoughts

I believe that many IT organizations that support manufacturing enterprises have lost their way because they’ve forgotten that their role is as a service organization to the enterprise. Most of us are not in the technology business, we’re in the manufacturing business and organizations’ job, like IT, is to help the business grow revenue by supporting them in that activity. I think the notion of service orientation of talent acquisition within IT focused on the customer is lost. One of the things that I say to my team is:

Rule number one: The customers always right

Rule number two: See rule number one if the customer’s wrong.

The idea being, that we’ve forgotten what our role is within the enterprise.

Technology trends Impacting Enterprise Business Environment and Manufacturing Industry

I actually don’t think its specific to manufacturing, which, like other enterprises, is being bombarded with mobility as being key to success. The problem for the CIO is what to do and what not to do because you can very easily become sucked in or preoccupied with it, to the point where it’s all that you focus on. Mobility certainly has a role to play, but I really believe that it’s been blown out of proportion and the notion that it’s ready and here and available, I think it’s still not quite the case.

Technologies giving competitive edge in the Manufacturing sector

I think, the technology that will give leaders within the manufacturing sector a competitive edge is real feedback capabilities. When we get to the point where the manufacturing environment is available in real-time to report back efficiencies, that, the technology will pay. For instance, in my business where we make pumps and motors, if we could get to the point where a pump or compressor tells us that it’s wearing down or it’s about to break, that would then allow us to go out to a customer before they run into a situation and tell them there’s time to repair the device.

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