Summary

Glenn from Abelara visits Fuuz corporate headquarters during boot camp week and sits down with Steve to walk through the real manufacturing pain points that Fuse solves — from the supply chain and factory floor divide, to quality traceability, bill of materials wars, real-time variance tracking, and the multi-plant standardization trap. Steve frames Fuse as the system that lives "where the carpet meets the concrete."

About the Guest

Steve is a senior leader at Fuuz with deep manufacturing operations experience. He positions Fuse as a composable platform covering MES, WMS, quality, scheduling, EDI, and iPaaS integration — designed to complement ERP rather than replace it.

Key Topics Covered

• The supply chain vs. factory floor divide: pegging sales orders to work orders
• ERP's visibility gap below the shop floor level
• Quality traceability: tracking components from dock to shipment
• Recording PLC parameters per serial number for root cause
• The bill of materials war: supply chain, manufacturing, and R&D views
• The golden triangle: PLM ↔ MES ↔ ERP integration
• Real-time variance tracking by work center and operator
• Multi-plant standardization without forcing ERP onto the floor
• Reducing tech stack from 40 vendors with a composable platform
• Balancing corporate control vs. local plant innovation

Key Takeaways

1. Pegging sales orders to work orders lets planners make partial shipment decisions in real time — most systems produce blanket work orders blind to customer demand.
2. The million-unit recall problem exists because companies test everywhere but trace nowhere — traceability is the missing layer, not more testing.
3. Use ERP for financials and front office; use MES for the shop floor. Forcing ERP down to the plant floor is why no enterprise has ever achieved one-ERP standardization.

Notable Quotes

• "Where the carpet meets the concrete — that's where Fuse takes over." — Steve
• "The money's made and lost on the shop floor." — Steve
• "No two machines are alike. Even from the same manufacturer, they're all different." — Steve

Timestamps / Chapters

[00:00] — Inside Fuse HQ: a software company that knows manufacturing
[01:34] — The supply chain and factory floor divide
[03:14] — Pegging sales orders to work orders
[04:30] — ERP's visibility gap on the shop floor
[06:55] — Quality: the hardest challenge in manufacturing [08:09] — Tracking components from dock to shipment [09:48] — The million-unit recall problem
[11:05] — Recording 120 PLC parameters per serial number [12:48] — What R&D leaders really need from production data [14:18] — The bill of materials war
[15:29] — The golden triangle: PLM, MES, and ERP
[18:53] — Real-time gross margin and variance tracking [21:42] — IT's challenge: future-proofing manufacturing [24:04] — The multi-plant standardization trap
[27:49] — Employee development across standardized plants
[29:48] — Closing thoughts

Links & Resources

• Fuse: fuse.com
• Steve Modrall: LinkedIn
• Glenn Gardner: LinkedIn
• Abelara: abelara.com