Gartner recently introduced a new Magic Quadrant and acronym, BOAT. Which stands for Business Orchestration and Automation Technology. The basic concept is that organizations that have several disparate automation systems running that do not talk to each other, is an unhealthy situation. That companies need to focus on End-to-End orchestration where all of these systems communicate and are managed by an overarching system.
Part of the conversation going on in the technology press revolves around the use of “Low Code Development”. Software programming tools that use graphical interfaces, drag and drop functionality, and pre-built components to speed up code development. You know, like MCL, the software tool that we have been promoting for decades now!
Glad to know that we are finally cool! That the little-known software tool out of Belgium that we have been using to rapidly develop low-cost applications is finally relevant. Piling on this a little bit, we featured a new product from Zebra last month, the ZEC500. An Android based workstation that runs Zebra’s version of Android with all of its cool features to help with Data Collection, management of the device, networking, etc.
Well guess what, we can write MCL applications for this new desktop computer for data collection, label printing, RFID, pretty much any application that you can dream up.
Getting back to the BOAT concept, we have been promoting “Strategic Automation” for some time now. The one bite at a time approach to making your operations better. Applying Six Sigma like thinking to going after the biggest issues in your operations with solutions first, then working your way down to the less crucial and less beneficial improvements as you go.
At first glance this might seem to contradict the BOAT principal, but actually, if we do this right, it is adhering to the principal. You see, we have the abilities to get our automation solutions to interact with your existing infrastructure. Getting data out of, and into your existing database, even writing new data back up to tables that can be pushed into your ERP, WMS, or MES system. All able to be part of your BOAT software, not sitting outside of its control.
If you want to explore how we can help you automate your operations on a budget, one step at a time, visit us at www.emptechgroup.com to learn more.