Seventh Life of MOM - Refined

Almost four years ago, I wrote about the "7 lives of MOM," a vision into the future of MOM architecture, and how it would be deployed. The 7^th life was defined as “No MOM,” where the functionality previously implemented in MOM systems would be distributed as apps across an Industrial IOT (IIoT) platform. This still seems like a good idea to most and the reality is getting closer, but in a different environment than that we had envisioned.

On February 24, 2021,Plex Systems announced the acquisition of Kors Engineering. Kors was founded in 1977 and is a small plant floor service provider that has been a long-time and successful Plex partner. Over time, the company has moved into offering software products as its focus, namely its flagship Mach2 that provides machine connectivity (white-labeled Kepware drivers), basic HMI/SCADA functionality, and the ability to develop lightweight manufacturing applications through their no-code/low-code development environment.

LNS recently participated in Plex Systems’ annual customer event, PowerPlex 2020, which was held virtually for the first time.  Three themes emerged from the event. 

LNS Research recently attended Oracle OpenWorld 2019 in San Francisco. One of the mega technology events for the Golden Gate City, the conference took over all three halls at the Moscone Center and had over 60,000 attendees.

Oracle is now over $40 billion in revenue (2018) with over 137,000 employees; it positions itself as the number one supplier of business software. The company is clearly innovating in many directions. The event covers the two sides of Oracle: Oracle, the technology, and Oracle, the applications vendor. Additionally, the firm has sophisticated positioning for “emerging technologies.” So, let’s examine each, and determine if this means Oracle can finally engage deeply in the plant.

Plex Systems held its annual PowerPlex user conference in Detroit the week of May 13, 2019, with just over 1,000 attendees and a few dozen sponsors across technology partners and systems integrators. A group of high schoolers were also in attendance, demonstrating their very cool entries for the FIRST Robotics competition; during the event Plex announced a $40,000 donation to this organization that works to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology.

Over 4,000 people attended Epicor Insights 2019 in Las Vegas the week of April 15. As in previous years, the conference showcased new products and upgrades from a leading supplier of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for the mid-market, with users across manufacturing, distribution, service, and retail companies.

On December 11, Dassault Systèmes (3DS) announced the acquisition of mid-size manufacturing ERP vendor IQMS for $425 million. While this seems like a high price, the fit for 3DS is strong, and it will considerably extend the offerings 3DS can make to their midsize discrete manufacturing clients.

The #MondayMusings Industrial Transformation blog series provides insight and analysis for executives from the previous week’s briefings, events, and publications @LNSResearch.

On July 31, manufacturing ERP vendor Plex Systems announced the acquisition of DATTUS, an Indianapolis-based software company focused on collecting machine data from the factory floor and applying advanced analytics. Terms of the deal were not disclosed .

As the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market approaches the quarter-century mark, many manufacturers and asset-intensive industries are going through an upgrade or refresh cycle. With the growing importance of Cloud, mobility, Big Data analytics and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), these firms are frequently driven by competition, or senior management’s desire to change the company's competitive position, through Digital Transformation to become a Smart Manufacturing company. LNS has numerous end-user clients that see their business environment changing, and application decisions they made one or two decades ago now leave them with a technology portfolio that inhibits their ability to pursue Digital Transformation. Data from our IIoT survey shows that of the nearly 650 respondents, 62% list enterprise application spending as the number one investment area, over Big Data analytics and knowledge management. Unfortunately, many firms struggle with choosing their next generation ERP technology. What are the most common mistakes that make it so hard?

In my long career in manufacturing operations, I have had many discussions with product design teams for discrete manufacturing. These discussions have ranged from pure delight to taxing because while the product designers were smart and creative they were also somewhat self-centred. Sharing of data has been a natural extension of sharing ideas, goals, and success for those of us who have worked together in design and operations, and data sharing usually resulted  in new products.

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