"A business decision for supply chain planning should focus on the selection of the technology that can drive better business outcomes. This often in direct opposition with the solution that minimizes the IT budget. For example, there are very few planning pilots where Oracle or SAP beat the competition on capabilities. I often tell clients, “What good is a cheap solution if it does not solve the business problem?” A focus on IT standardization is one of the primary reason for low business user satisfaction in the recent study shown in Figure 5."

"There are some indications of this shift: the appearance of urban rooftop farms, an explosion of interest in automated hydroponic systems. The problem with all these systems is that their platforms are proprietary, and the lack of a common platform between them means these won’t necessarily scale up."

"Next generation solutions add speed. They are moving to the cloud, becoming accessible through mobile devices and are perhaps even enhanced with analytics. But little has been done to improve the methodology or the functionality. Protected Flow Manufacturing is the first completely new approach to production planning and execution in decades."