The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

Sometimes a picture can bring more clarity to a concept. For Canonical Data, an animation is what is called for. I found this animation of canonical data and its implementation.  I think the first minute and a half paint a very good picture of how canonical data is implemented and can be leveraged.  Later in the animation they start to describe a global vision of implementation.  Unfortunately I must disagree with this vision.  I don’t think that having a global canonical form of data will ever truly be a solution that works.

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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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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…)

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…)