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Reason 23. We're engineers. We have to design products, not play around with computers. Reason 24. Our engineers won't accept changes to the way they work. Reason 25. Users don't want to be spied on by Big Brother systems like EDM/PDM. Reason 26. We have CAD, so we don't need EDM/PDM. Reason 27. We don't need EDM/PDM because our CAD system has a data management module. Reason 28. No system can handle all our data. Reason 29. They want to replace us with an EDM/PDM system. Reason 30. EDM/PDM response times are too long. Engineers can't wait all day for information. Reason 31. We were given the responsibility two years ago of creating a computer integrated business. EDM/PDM isn't addressed in our master plan, so it can't be implemented yet. Reason 32. EDM/PDM? It's too early, come back in five years when it's matured. Reason 33. It's all vendor hype. Forget it. Even the EDM/PDM sales guys we've talked to don't understand it. Reason 34. Why do we need an EDM/PDM system? We already have a relational database management system on our mainframe. Reason 35. We weren't asked to help when the Engineering Department started to use CAD, so we're not going to help with EDM/PDM. Reason 36. We're busy at the moment evaluating the role of V5, NT and OSF in our client/server/user paradigm, so we don't have time to look at EDM/PDM. Reason 37. The last time we spoke to our computer vendor, we were told that companies like ours don't need EDM/PDM yet. Reason 38. We in Marketing have been saying for years that the Engineering Department is unmanageable. Every time we tell them what kind of a product the customers want, they go and design something completely different. If we tell them they need EDM/PDM, they'll deliberately go and do something else. Reason 39. From a Manufacturing viewpoint, the Engineering Department is a disaster zone, but it's not our job to sort out their mess. We've asked them several times to clean up their Bills of Materials, but they're just not interested. It's the same with changes - they always want to change parts they've only just released to us. And when they send us documentation, it's never complete. It's taken a long time, but now we've worked out how to be as independent as possible from their mess. We certainly don't want to be involved with them on EDM/PDM. Reason 40. We're glad to be in the field, well away from the Engineering Department. Those guys have no idea how to run a business, or treat a customer. They never seem to know the configuration on a given site, and they never seem to know which versions they released. They often develop replacement parts that can't be used in existing products. To overcome these problems, we developed our own drawing management system, our own parts classification system, and our own reference manuals. Apart from the spare parts inventory, we also have a buffer inventory in case things really get out of hand. There's no way we will have anything to do with their EDM/PDM - we have to serve our customers, not spend all day fooling around with systems that don't work properly, and people who don't know how to work professionally. |