Once again ROI from MES - Not Really!

So much has bee written and discussed about ROI for MES. I got involved in the latest discussion on a LinkedIn group. I guess that this question is one of the great phenomena of the MES domain. Unlike other types of systems (ERP, QMS, PLM, etc.) the returns and direct benefits hardly provide enough to justify the investment. To complicate matters even more the actual reasons for employing MES differ not only by industry but also by customer. Para-phrasing Paul Boris from the LinkedIn discussion “it is like explaining to your kids why they should eat their veggies”.

It is no wonder that MES solutions are typically the last ones to be implemented in the typical manufacturing solution landscape. It is simply too hard to provide a clear and concise return or benefit from an MES alone or at least to justify the investment – and MESs do not come cheap. On the other hand it is obviously much easier when there is a specific and typically catastrophic event that needs to be remedied, such as a recall, 483 (FDA warning letter), regulatory compliance, detrimental quality issues, etc.

MES need to be thought of as enablers for operational excellence where the ROI and benefit come from the “Whole” solution and not the system. For example more efficient process, better quality, effective material management, etc. The ROI and/or benefits have to then be attributed to The Whole Solution – focus on the solution rather than the System (i.e. MES).

Experimenting with the "New Rules of Marketing"

During the last few years I have been learning and experimenting with the concepts of "The new rules of marketing", David Meerman Scott (see his blog). I must say that it has been a great learning experience. The latest exploit is helping my Wife to promote the rental of her mother’s house. We found a semi free website that allow listing of rentals. We made sure that it ranked high in a relevant Google search. Then we created a Facebook group and thus we started to promote it through our online social network, which apart from FaceBook also included Twitter, LinkedIn, and this blog of course. It is really kind of an experiment but I really love to see how it unfolds. My Wife is ecstatic about how quickly you can reach out to people for help in promoting it.  She is constantly on Facebook looking at how many people joined the group. Yes I know that is not directly equal to somebody actually renting it but it still has a certain buzz to it. 

I have been doing similarly in building my personal brand and also marketing the sub division that I live in. We have created a blog that is used to exchange and share information with our members, a Twitter profile to send updates and information around, a Facebook group, and a Google profile. I must say that it has taken much longer than I expected to gain momentum. However I have been receiving very positive feedback about how well this works and more, and more of our members are starting to use all these different resources. Of course there is the added value of promoting our neighborhood allowing people that may be interested in a home purchase to get a peek at our community and the people who live there – hopefully this will also help our real estate value.