Thanks Wendy, 

A useful article. You are absolutely correct that each package (ERP, PLM, QMS, MES) have a purpose and some of the vendor's solutions are great at doing it. Each system tends to be its own master data holder and rarely share their valuable information. Integration of data should be easier than it is. There are several reasons why it rarely happens. There is rarely a person that understands the details of multiple systems well enough. The developers or integrators tend to be selfish, their first reaction is typically we can do that, and rarely consider what is the best solution. One of many examples of integration gone wrong is a very recent SAP rollout. The SAP integrators best offer was to generate an overnight CSV file holding production run data for the operators. With multiple production changes currently occurring hourly (which is an issue), they were offering an unusable solution. We wanted the latest information in realtime from the new system so that we could continue to automatically verify actual material was valid at the point of selection.  Effectively they are going backwards, and are asking operators to bypass the system and they will end up with bad data. The answer we get is along the lines of let's see how it goes, they are the experts and know best, I am sure they have considered the consequences of that.

The lines between the various systems are often too strong, there is a lot of shared information. MES systems tend to be the best at sharing data, but I may be saying that because they are the systems I have been involved with most.

Integration is hard work but well worth the effort of getting it right. understanding the data, where it is best used, held and sourced is a key.