Radio Pirate DJ - "This Is Life, This Is Living."

I don’t often blog about things other than Plexus but this is one blog that has nothing to do with Plexus Online.

On Friday October 19th, I was invited by Michael & Brittany to attend the Flint Generals hockey game. The Flint Generals are working hard at rebuilding the tradition of Flint hockey in 2007 and the band Michael is playing with Radio Pirate DJ was chosen as the band to help with the rebuilding effort on opening night. As one of Michigans top unsigned bands Radio Pirate DJ opened the night in front of a crowd of 2851 fans. I was very impressed with “Radio Pirate DJ” it was the first time I’ve had the chance to see Mike Reed play live.

Radio Pirate DJ is almost ready release their new CD "This Is Life, This Is Living." The songs on the soon to be released CD “this is life, this is living” are of the caliber will put them over the top and on the way to living their dream and breaking hearts. They have a few demos of the soon to be released CD on their MySpace.

The CD is getting it’s finishing touches now and on Friday October 26th the photoshoot for "This Is Life, This Is Living." with Nicole Rork was held in Detroit. She is an amazing photographer and Radio Pirate DJ’s "This Is Life, This Is Living." will have some fantastic photo shots.

Want to see them live? You can find their show schedule on MySpace.

This is a link to video from the Radio Pirate DJ show at the Royal Oak Music Theater on October 17th 2007

Josh LaFave - Vocals/Guitar, Drew Easton - Drummer, Michael Reed- Vocals/Bass, Bryan Aldrich-Keyboard/Synth, J.R. Augustine- Vocals/Guitar

Detroit Pistons visit Plexus Systems

The Detroit Pistons Players Rip Hamilton, Antonio McDyess and Lindsey Hunter go the extra mile to visit Plexus Systems, Inc. There is no better way to have your season tickets delivered than by the players themselves. Thank You!

Mike Hart and Antonio McDyess

Dennis Heyza and Rip Hamilton

Deanna Gernert (Oakland University Co-Op employee) and Lindsey Hunter and happy employee faces all around.

Brittany Hayward (Lapeer West High School Co-Op employee) and the vintage 1957 Chevy the Detroit Pistons drove to visit Plexus Systems.

Detroit Pistons Visit Plexus Online

They gave me (Kim Hayward) a hat during the visit and Rip Hamilton was nice enough to sign it. The hat also contains signatures from Antonio McDyess and Lindsey Hunter. It now resides in my office at Plexus Systems in Auburn Hills, Michigan. I'm such a SAP for events at Plexus Online Software.

I'm going to bet that Tim McGookey (Kettering University Co-Op employee) now holds the most coveted Plexus Online basketball on earth. These basketballs have been our giveaway’s at many March tradeshows and have been our tie in to March Madness spirit. Nice move Tim.

Lisa Hosner awaits the players in the 57 Chevy! Lisa the team driver?

Rip Hamilton, Lindsey Hunter and Antonio McDyess, head out after a tour of Myles Wohl's office. Myles has the “Plexus Pistons” best decorated "fan office" here at Plexus. You can view a photo of Myles in his office with the players at http://www.nba.com/pistons/news/extramile_071010.html

It's photo number 9.

Lies My Software Vendor Told Me

There is a direct correlation between the number of people using the system and the validity, timeliness and usefulness of the information. User based pricing discourages broad use and results in suboptimal implementations. Vendors are able to present a low initial price that seems very appealing.

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The Traceability Advantage

Plexus Systems, Inc. Mark Symonds, CEO published by Quality Magazine. To read the entire article click the "read more" link.

The technology solution also included effective problem control systems used to manage corrective action reports, customer concerns, online supplier management and problem solving. Parts traceability technology solutions work to eliminate recalls by providing real-time reports on the machines, components, stations, shifts and operators involved in the defective product and processes before the product is shipped. These technology features also identify defects prior to customer delivery to reduce in-process costs, along with facilitating design changes that improve a part’s performance.

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7 Things you may not know about Plexus:Software as a Service (SaaS)

Here are Seven more things you may not know about Plexus. This is an continuation blog related to the 11 things you may not know and 9 things you may not know.

1. Matt Harrell, the Chief Security Officer at Plexus, holds a black belt in Shorin-Ryu karate.

2. Ctrl-P will bring up the printer dialog to print the screen.

3. There is free food and soda in the break rooms at Plexus.

4. The Maintenance System allows you to define specific machine parameters. These measured values can be graphed over time and used for Predictive Maintenance.

5. The Plexus Sales and CRM system can take many forms, depending on the specific requirements.

6. Plexus Systems owns the registered trademark for Scanban® —the concept of a bar coded Kanban Card that is tracked electronically through the shop.

7. Dealer direct shipments are processed by populating the order number and dealer number on page 3 of the customer release.

Jerry Foster’s You Tube Video Provides Hope & Breath of Fresh Air

It’s very compelling and complementary when you find a blog that is just wishing Plexus Online was focusing on their industry. In Delyan Raychev’s blog today he has explained SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and hopes for our entry into the Higher Education market to relieve this market from the high cost that SAP and Sunguard have driven into it.

Jerry Foster’s YouTube video is referenced in Delyan’s blog as a great example of SaaS and he lists the following as the key bullets from Jerry’s video.

• SaaS (specifically Plexus Online) promises 99.9 uptime 24/7
• always "latest and greatest" software for each customer - monthly, daily, hourly updates
• SaaS is mature - not future but past - Plexus Systems have been providing it for 9 years

Delyan, Plexus Online is dedicated to focusing 100% of our resources on the manufacturing market and has no current plans to change that direction. You’ve provided a compelling call for Plexus Online to help in your industry. Maybe Someday…

You can view Delyan’s entire blog entry HERE.

Oracle Chimes In

The conversation continues.

This recent blog entry, entitled SAAS Doesn’t Pay, Oracle’s Ellison Says, noted that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made comments that essentially knock SAP's recently unveiled midmarket on-demand strategy Business ByDesign. Ellison stated that Oracle is instead moving “beyond ERP [enterprise resource planning] to industry-specific software." You can’t get anymore industry specific than Plexus Online.

We here at Plexus Online were first to take the field with a proven, award winning on-demand software specifically designed for manufacturing enterprises.

That’s what we do, focusing 100% of our resources on the manufacturing market. This focus shows in the feature-set and architectural model of our system, Plexus Online. We were the first company in the world to provide manufacturing ERP and related functions via the software-as-a-service model, in 2001. We continue to lead the charge by providing functionality and services unmatched by even the largest companies in the world.

Top Linked SEO's in Greater Detroit Area

I found something interesting today on Google. I currently hold the title of second toped linked SEO in the Greater Detroit Area.

Top Linked SEOs in Greater Detroit Area
2, Kim Hayward, 107, 0, SEO Marketing Manager at Plexus Systems, Inc. Greater Detroit Area. 3, Jeff Raab, 102, 5, Founder & CEO, DealerDex.com

So of course when you find something like this you have to go on a little search to find out who is holding that number one position. I found that he is Andrew Miller of the Greater Detroit Area a Search Engine Marketing Consultant.

So what is a SEO? I spend hours scouring the web looking for a way to improve http://www.plex.com/ listings on the search engines. (Google, Yahoo, MSN) Some of my time is spent managing multi- million dollar budget in Paid Placement Advertisement on those same search engines.

Yet, the majority of my time is spent optimizing pages and content to rank high in the organic or sometimes called the natural search results. Organic/Natural search results allow traffic to reach you at no cost to the company, so that multi-million dollar budget is never spent.

To do that you have to know what is being published about the subject that is being promoted to the search engines. Often the fact that something is being published is not passed on to a person that does the SEO of a company. Tools like netvibes are setup and become a wonderful SEO tool.

Everything I do is created with one end result in mind, increasing the traffic to Plexus Online. My goal is to reach all of the companies in the Manufacturing Industry searching for new software.

I guess the need to provide an explanation of SEO comes from two different emails I received this week. Jerry Foster asking me the question; “How did you find that?” When I published an article from BrentOzar.com. So the short answer Jerry is “Netvibes.com”.

The other email was from Todd Gillissie, Developer, at Plexus Systems and independent game publisher, his latest release is "Shady O'Grady's Rising Star”. Todd, felt more credit should be given to authors of a post on this blog, more so than just the "read more: link. If you jump back up a couple of paragraphs you’ll find the answer to that issue. The paragraph starts with “Everything”. If the "read more" link is not there at the end of an article then it's me.

Much Ado About SAP's Business By Design

Mark Symond, CEO of Plexus Systems post his views about SAP joining the Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model.

"I am thrilled to have SAP enter the on-demand ERP market. If executives at mid-size companies had any lingering doubt about the viability of ERP on-demand, SAP's scurry into the market should put that to rest. The behemoth is slowly awaking to see that the train has not only already left the station, but it is around the bend and has already picked up a lot of passengers."

In Search Of Simplicity, Ease of Use

The blogosphere continues to reverberate with news of the recent SAP event introducing SAP Business ByDesign on demand solution for the mid sized enterprise.

For instance, this blog out of the UK summarizes a Forester analyst who makes this observation about the global software giant SAP. The analyst concluded “simplicity and ease of use still remain elusive to the vendor.”

We at Plexus Online couldn’t agree more!

The stakes are just too high for small and medium sized manufacturers, in particular, to move to a web-hosted ERP solution from a legacy technology provider known for its overly complex and unwieldy solutions.

Plexus Online users are very demanding about usability, functionality, vertical industry focus, and integration. Plexus Online is designed to support an organization’s key business processes and manage its most critical manufacturing business and operations information, from the “top floor to the shop floor” as we at Plexus Online like to say. Let’s face it; if a user interface is too complex for a shop floor operator to use, the entire effectiveness of a manufacturing technology solution is in question.

Another blogger, David Terrar of Business Two Zero, puts it this way about the SAP Business ByDesign user interface. He observes, "it looked to me like they have missed a big opportunity to simplify the user interface,"

Kors Engineering Pilots Plexus Machine Integration System at Shape Corp.

Kors Engineering, a Waterford Michigan based control system integrator, has successfully deployed a pilot system to integrate machines at Shape Corp. with Plexus Online. Shape Corp. chose Plexus Online as their business information system provider in 2006. Early in 2007, Shape contacted Kors Engineering seeking a means of integrating their plant floor equipment with Plexus in real-time. Based on previous experience integrating factory floor PLCs, Kors was able to create a modular system that provided all the tools needed to perform the interaction between the two systems.

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Jerry Foster: Plexus Systems: Plan Cache Analysis in SQL Server 2005

Here is a bloggers review of the presentation Jerry did today at the PASS Summit 2007.

In contrast to the Dell presenter, Jerry lit up the room as soon as he got started. This guy was born to teach. This was the first SQL seminar I’ve seen where people burst into spontaneous applause during one of his demos, even before he got to a conclusion.

Jerry and the crew at Plexus Online built a slick system to interpret the dynamic management views for the query plan cache. In a nutshell, his queries make it easy to see where load is coming from down to the batch and statement level, all without running a resource-expensive trace on the production servers.

About five minutes into the session, I knew I wouldn’t bother taking notes because I’d print out the slides and pore over them anyway. I downloaded his code the minute he put the URL up on the projector, and I’m going to spend a week going through it. He didn’t give out the source code for his front end, and I’m torn between building my own in classic ASP (miserable language, but I know it well enough to be dangerous) versus SSRS 2008 (which I don’t know at all, but might do well to learn.)

I’m not even going to try to touch base on everything Jerry discussed. Hard-core database engine DBAs owe it to themselves to go get his samples and pore over them.

I got chuckles out of some of the audience members’ questions, though. One of them started picking out differences between memory allocations on 32-bit versus 64-bit servers, trying to find out how much memory over 4gb his 32-bit servers could use for the plan cache. Hey, buddy, if you have to ask that question, then you need to upgrade to 64-bit. And if your database server isn’t capable of upgrading to 64-bit SQL, but you’re sitting in a seminar about caching, then you’ve got your priorities all wrong.

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Plexus Online vs. SAP Business ByDesign

Plexus Systems has been providing on-demand ERP and MES solutions for manufacturers since 2001. SAP announced limited availability of a solution, originally code-named A1S and formally known as Business ByDesign

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SAP Unwraps A1S, Revealing New Mid-Market On-Demand Product Called Business ByDesign

At a press conference today in New York City, SAP officials spoke broadly about the new product's impact on the company and the market, which already is home to on-demand enterprise application offerings from such vendors as salesforce.com, Plexus Systems, and Glovia, to name a few.

"This is a new era for SAP," said Henning Kagermann, chairman and chief executive of the Walldorf, Germany-based company. "This is the most important announcement I've made in my career to date."

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