On 02-Jun-2010, at 10:50 AM, Arun Khan wrote:
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:44 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:
I have been invited by one of the more pro-active engineering and manufacturing associations of the country to present a paper on the role of open source in helping our country compete with the best in the world. This is a great opportunity, because normally hard core manufacturers and industrialists have no exposure to such things. I do not have too much experience in these areas and request everyone to give inputs on this so I could make a dent in this sector.
I am not sure what input you are seeking but topics like ERP, Supply Chain Managemen (SCM), conformance to govt. regulations as well as interaction with govt. come to mind.
Yes, in areas like CRM and CMS lots of good solutions are there in the open source domains These software are also built on LAMP architecture. It would be one area to concentrate on as its easily understood by the manufacturing industry. You need to talk of killer applications, those which will quickly show benefits in terms of more efficiency.
May be something in communication technology specially for those with offices and factories at different locations.
Do not talk of ERP in open source as its a complete failure in Indian scenario at least.
I have interacted with a couple of manufacturers one in the plastic tube industry and the other in copper tube manufacturing. The adoption of open source, just as in any other organization, is highly dependent on the "vision at the top" The plastic tube manufacturer does not care what the underlying platform is as long as the solution gives the co. a lower TCO (one of the few who actually understands the value of TCO), the COO has appreciates the fact that his ERP server has been running non stop (except for power outage) and is now looking to migrate his task workers desktop to Ubuntu. The copper tube manufacturer did want to move to open source on desktops (task workers) and server (file server and gw etc.); This same manufacturer also dealt various PSUs and Govt. tenders - the major road block in this realm - need MS Windows and IE to upload bids. I did a month long pilot with them and removed all their objections to OO vis-a-vis MSO but there was a lot of resistance from the mid level management and their IT infra remains status quo (the MD was not keeping well and he had to rely on the mid managers to run the operation).
HTH.
-- Arun Khan