When your blog is called the ERP Graveyard, with images of tombstones and the stench of death everywhere, there's a tendency, perhaps, to accentuate the negative. Today's news brings a nice example of what appears to be more of a positive, strategic acquisition by SAP: the Lean specialist Factory Edge, which after all got seed funding from SAP's own venture fund.
Managing Automation has the details. Give SAP's Sudipta Bhattacharya credit for telling the story well: "We started out two years ago and said shop floor to top floor is key. Phase one involved support for the ISA-95 standard. Next, we needed Lighthammer to get visibility capabilities and analytics. Now, with Factory Logic, we will give people on the plant floor the ability to have a schedule."
Now, if SAP turns around and buys Infor, as Jim Shepherd at AMR has suggested, I reserve the right to take these nice comments back.
