This is part of my earlier posts on WMS/MSCA sessions at Oracle Open World.
Going Mobile in the Supply Chain
Jennifer Sherman, Sr. Director of Oracle WMS Strategy
Ken Norris, Director, Ottawa Hospitals
Jen Sherman and Ken Norris from Ottawa Hospital jointly led this session. Jen gave a very good recap of the various mobility platforms that Oracle has to offer. Just in case you are curious to know there are 3 of them. I will even summarize it for you here.
- WMS and MSCA: A warehouse environment confines the WMS operators to a narrow area. Therefore WMS and MSCA work very well in an “always connected” mode telnet based mobile apps. Also comes in a GUI flavor with windows based mobile devices running JVM.
- EAM: Connected and disconnected mode applications. I understand Oracle does not have a standard disconnected mode application for EAM and partners with 3rd party vendors
- Mobile Field Service: Since field service apps require field service personnel to be mobile and cover long range, these apps are traditionally disconnected. More recently they also run on browser based EDGE/3G networks.
Ottawa Hospital is different from your average MSCA implementation due to the fact that it’s a hospital store that supplies to various departments using replenishment carts. It was an information “rich” session with great tips and best practices from Ken about managing an MSCA and WMS project. Some that I made it to my notes are:
How to be a Supply Chain Hero: Quick Wins in the Supply Chain
Jennifer Sherman, Sr. Director of Oracle WMS Strategy
Carrie Lukatch, Director, Oracle Product Marketing
Kudos goes to Oracle product marketing for choosing the creative title for this presentation. The session was all about achieving rapid ROI on your IT investments. The session showcased three oracle products that are capable of delivering such heroic feats: Manufacturing Operations Center, Supply Chain BI and our very own MSCA. The “heroic feat” means a 13 weeks implementation and ROI within 4 months. That’s a heroic feat indeed by any standards. However the world of application implementations is replete with disappointed users, broken promises, chronic time and budget overruns. The rapid ROI is tantalizing. However the reality is that unless done correctly, there is considerable risk of falling short of these objectives. Now I am not implying that these ROIs are not realistic or cannot be achieved. Far from it! I will echo what Charles Philips said in his keynote: “the hard work begins at our customers after we ship the code”. In effect buying the software is the easy part but it requires a lot of blood, tear and sweat to make the software pay for itself. Now that is “heroic” in my book.
-Amin Sikander
