When the ERP Gets Blamed for a BOM Problem

A $200 million manufacturer brought us in convinced their business system was the problem. The signs looked like a classic software failure: inventory accuracy was a disaster, expediting charges were bleeding money every month, and quarter after…

The Question to Ask Before You Pick an ERP

Before choosing an ERP system, most companies ask which platform fits their vision. Few ask whether they have the people to keep it standing after go-live. Eleven years ago, we faced this decision directly. A design engineer on our team pitched…

The Buyer With a Notebook in His Desk Drawer

Three months after a new business system went live, we found a buyer keeping his real numbers in a notebook in his desk drawer. The system wasn't broken. Nobody had asked him what he actually needed before they built it. We've watched this same…

Operational Debt: The Cost That Doesn’t Show Up on the Dock

Every month-end, we've watched three departments sit in a room and fix the same numbers by hand — engineering, purchasing, and cost accounting, cleaning up the same mess for the fourth month running. The company in question is doing great,…

Software Should Be the Last Decision in an ERP Project

Selecting software should be the last decision in an ERP project, not the first. That answer disappoints a lot of owners who ask which system we recommend, because the honest response is usually: we don't know yet — not until we understand…

The Process That Was Never Written Down

Early in our career, we took night classes in supply chain, several of them taught by working professionals inside their own plants. One class was held at a factory that built industrial gas turbine engines. The instructor told us about the…

Six Years of Duct Tape: What We Learned Rebuilding From Scratch

We once paid developers for six years to keep a dead system alive. Vendor support had ended, and the system was customized so heavily that the vendor's own updates wouldn't take. So we did what a lot of companies do: kept paying developers to…

Before You Add AI, Fix the Process

A plant manager once showed us a new AI forecasting dashboard — beautiful charts, confident numbers. Then we asked where the inventory data came from. Three different spreadsheets, two people who usually kept them updated, and a bill of materials…

The Day the President Didn’t Know His Own Floor Was Empty

Early in our career, we were running Master Scheduling and MRP for a capital equipment manufacturer. The company had been bleeding margin, and leadership had a plan: cut payroll. Not processes, not waste, not the meetings that ate every Tuesday…

What a Free ERP Cost Calculator Is Really Selling

A slick, free ERP cost calculator showed up in our feed recently. Three minutes, no email required, promising to reveal what a company's broken software is really costing them. We ran it. Here's the trick: no matter what you enter, the math…