The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

Not to be masochistic, but among friends and neighbours a common topic of conversation between men is our occupations. “What do you do?” is a common question and conversation starter.  As we all know, sometimes it is difficult to explain what we do to those outside of our business.  There are people that I have known for years that still don’t really understand what it is that I do at work. (more…)

I remember a day when we had a problem with our order processing.  When we finally figured out what was wrong, there were a few embarrassed people.  We had introduced some new monitoring to the system, but had done so in such a way that we added a point of failure to the ordering process.

This was and is a bad thing.  And it can be avoided easily by making sure that you use a passive monitoring system.  By its very nature the state of a passive system has no impact on the system being monitored. (more…)

I started thinking that I would create a comprehensive integration guide and framework. A document that would guide a person from the beginning to end of an integration, covering all the bases, and addressing all the issues. Then I ditched the idea. No one would ever want to read it. (not even me.) Instead here are 7 simple steps that should get your going, and that you should follow in each integration project. The rest of the plan is largely, and subjectively up to you. (more…)

Whether we are talking about e-commerce or any other movement of data, we will need to capture points of data to ensure proper monitoring and reliability. There is an overall strategy to this, and three types of data points that should be monitored; Points that are convenient. Points that are helpful.  And points that are necessary. With these points monitored and the data that passes them recorded and aggregated properly, a reliable and supportable system is created. (more…)

After you have created your usage specification, it can be useful to use a validation tool to check to verify that new trading partners comply during your boarding process. I have used Foresight’s EDI Analyzer for this many times, and it lets be quickly see where the EDI file departs from the specification.

There is a temptation to use this same validation in the production integration. But this would be a mistake. I’m not saying, “Don’t validate.” I highly encourage validation on both standard compliance and required data validation in mapping and integration. But to use the usage specification has a side effect that I witnessed once. (Only once.) (more…)

Sometimes we hear and then use industry jargon without having a clear definition of what they are.  I think all of us are guilty of this from time to time.  This post clarifies what a SKU is, and discusses how SKUs are used in the supply chain, and in EDI.

Definition:  SKU stands for “Stock keeping Unit” initially used for identifying items that a company keeps in stock so that they can track how many they have and such.  Now also used for services, and for contracts or warranties. (more…)

I was reading an article on Spend Matters, by Jason Busch, and I had an idea. Jason was writing about Twitter entering the B2B Mainstream. Now to be honest I had heard about Southwest’s proactive use of twitter to monitor and shape how their customer experience was being perceived.  And like many things with Southwest’s business, I find it to be touched with brilliance.  So as I read about it, I was suddenly struck with a much deeper way that twitter and twitter like technologies could be used. (more…)

Want to get in the head of SAP CEO Leo Apotheker?  Charlie Rose does in this interview.

Leo answers a question from Charlie about what makes a software company successful.  Leo responds and explains that it is taking good ideas, and incorporating them in software.  He then goes on to explain that industry leaders like SAP are made by specializing in one line of business.  Companies that only have Enterprise software as one of their business lines will never achieve the same level of expertise.

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When setting up a supply chain integration, there is a lot of information that is exchanged. One thing that should be explored is what the supplier will do if they can’t process the order. This should be explored by making a list of all the errors that you can conceive of. This is the beginning of your test plan. Then having the Vendor respond with what they will do. (this doesn’t have to be actual transfer of erroring files, it can just be filing out a form with what will happen when said error is sent.  But of course, actually sending bad files to and from your test systems is a good idea when possible.) In the end you will have an idea of what will happen and what to expect when something goes wrong. However, sometimes this doesn’t cover all the bases.

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To paraphrase a quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune, “The Data must flow.”  And in the same sense that spice was the life blood of Arakis, the flow of data is the life blood of any e-commerce integration.  In the past I have talked about how RFID technology can be used to enhance the flow of data.  In an e-commerce supply chain it can give more up to date information as to where products are located, and thus what state they are in. (more…)

Today at Spend Matters, Jason Busch posted the first in a series of articles about the gap between finance, and procurement in today’s business; “When Will finance Take Procurement Seriously?“  Jason quotes from a Basware study and professor Mark Frohlich, one if its authors, and makes some hard hitting and insightful points;

• 27% of companies surveyed have CFO’s holding a positive view of procurement’s impact on the bottom line.
• Finance does not believe that Procurement knows how to reduce costs. (more…)

In the news, LANSA White Paper Tackles Supply Chain Synchronization.  I came across this on itjungle.com.  LANSA is a provider of business systems that are database centric.  You can register to get the whitepaper at this link.

But in a quick recap of what you will find in this whitepaper, Nahid Jilovec talks about the historical progress of B2B and some of the triumphs, roadblocks, and challenges that B2B as faced over the years.  But then he goes farther and describes Supply Chain Synchronization as containing three phases; Connection, Communication, and Collaboration.

I admit that during the first few pages it was reviewing things that I learned first hand, but would be a good introduction to someone new to B2B integration.  But then he goes farther and describes some more advanced tactical and strategic ideas that are worth the read.

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Do you have some Supply Chain News or Product that should be shared?  Or do you use an integration tool or service that other should know about?  If so, please send me a note with a link or reference to news@theintegrationengineer.com and I will try to blog about it here.

And don’t forget to subscribe to my rss feed.

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Looking for innovation in Supply Chains isn’t hard to do, and it can have a great impact on the efficiency and therefore profitability of a business and market.  One place that greatly impacts the success of an integration is the desire to  build something new and sexy.  I rant sometimes about companies or development teams I have seen go down this path to their own detriment.

But today I want to tell you about a company I heard about that has created new efficiencies through integration efforts of a part of business you may have thought was already integrated.  The company is  INTTRA.  And instead of coming up with an untried technology, INTTRA used a combination of existing technologies to do something new. (more…)

I found this video on YouTube.

RFID is exciting technology for integration engineers.  All of this data coming in will have to be aggregated and integrated by someone.  Also, one of the focuses of integration is to provide more and better information to people and systems.  With more and better information people, businesses and systems can make better choices and decisions. (more…)

One of the things that Integration Engineers are asked to do is create documentation.  But as we all know, many times documentation is the last and poorest part of a project.  Developers and programmers don’t generally like writing documentation, and are generally considered the most qualified.

In comes the Integration Engineer to make the system work.  Producing effective documentation at this point is important.  We want to make the system work, and then hand if off to the team that will support it.  If we don’t create effective documentation, this last step can never happen, and we will be unable to undertake new integration work because we are still supporting the first one.  And if we are a contractor, we need this even more. (more…)

So you have done everything right.  You have gathered standards, documented your processes and deployed a successful integration.  Now what?  Do we just sit back watch the data flow and sip soft drinks?

I don’t think so.  You will now start to handle exceptions.  This means errors.  Most likely you will start to have repeating errors. Someone will have overlooked or misunderstood something, and now every time this thing happens there is an exception. (more…)

If you are tracking inventory, or transactions, you need to get data about the whereabouts of the things you are tracking.  In this instance, more data is better.  I found this video on YouTube where Sanjay Sarma from MIT gives a lecture on Supply Chain Management and using RFID technology.

Whether we are integrating the data gathered from RFID tracking, or using the techniques in our tracking of data transactions, the benefit is the same; A more robust, and flexible set of data and better issue resolution work flow. (more…)

I found this video on youTube.

Professor Mansour Javidan, Ph.D talks about supply chain considerations using blue jeans as a case study.  This clip is 3 minutes long.

Professor Javidan gives an amusing illustration of some of the challenges that can occur in supply chain integration.  9 different countries, currencies, cultures to get Blue Jeans to your store.  Each of these will have orders and payments that flow between companies, and across boarders. (more…)

EDI is a standard, and having standards in e-commerce or any type of integration, is important in achieving success in your integration efforts.  I found this old video of Bill Gates talking about this very topic, and I decided to share it here. (more…)