Announcing RutterKey Solutions, LLC Official “IFS Field Implementation Certification Program”
February 13, 2020
Teaming Arrangement Fuels High Octane Benefits for IFS Aerospace & Defense Customers
March 2, 2020
RutterKey strives to be an early adapter for all new IFS Applications™ product functionality especially as it relates to the challenge of mobile interfaces and making IoT viable for manufacturing and service operations
The Internet of Things (IoT)
As technological advancements grow omnipresent across all industries and walks of life, the impact felt by IoT serves as a textbook example of the value behind real time data management. And nowhere is this impact more critical and utilized than within the corporate ERP system. Enter IFS, a software developer where innovation and technology are part of their DNA. As early as 1998, IFS made the move to build applications on a component-based architecture. At the time, this new philosophy, which worked by joining thousands of small software components together with APIs, represented a break from previous formats of building on one big monolithic block of code.
Why is this important? Because two years later in 2000, Roy Fielding published his dissertation on representational state transfer (RESTful API), purporting the technical advantage of having a platform that makes it easy for various systems to share resources and integrate functionality. Two decades later, APIs are nothing new, but in this dawning age of artificial intelligence (AI), digital transformation, and IoT, their importance has come into sharp focus. They essentially define how different pieces of software work together. Because that working relationship is well-defined and established, it becomes easy to add and subtract components without needing to overhaul the entire ERP system.
IFS Apps 10 Aurena is natively built on and with RESTful APIs
As the world becomes more connected the flow of data increases. At home, our appliances, vehicles, and other devices will be capable of anticipating our needs and making life operate more efficiently. The same will be true for manufacturers and service industries who, in some ways, may become more like software companies over time, with staff who write code and design KPI dashboards. Due to its history, IFS is naturally poised to integrate with the software platforms that we already see in the modern factories and field service organizations of today – Likewise, IFS will be fit to grow and adapt with the new factory technology and service equipment of tomorrow.
“IFS core architecture is dependent on OData based Restful APIs; it’s the entire foundation for how the software’s front–end works. Every form and every interaction go through OData based Restful APIs. It is this firm commitment that delivers choice, flexibility and capabilities to end user customers.” – www.ifsworld.com
RutterKey embraces innovation with our onsite IFS developers’ lab
In the spirit of choice and flexibility, the software research lab located in our North American office was established to help our expert consultants dive deeper into IFS Apps10 functionality, and uncover solutions that bring third-party software, and its subsequent data, into the big ERP “picture” for clients and colleagues alike. In one recent lab project, the RutterKey team used a raspberry pi and the IFS IoT connector to automatically receive parts into inventory.
“In order to get any ERP system to run properly, you need to have quality data,” said Dr. Jeff White, CTO & VP of Product Development. “The exciting thing about IoT is that it can supply the needed data while eliminating a lot of manual entry. The new RutterKey Solutions lab is perfect for us to take actual examples and challenges we encounter in the field and then work on modeling a solution that will work universally for other scenarios, clients, and the IFS community as a whole.” To demonstrate their serious longtime commitment to this way of programming and development, IFS has recently joined the Open API Initiative, which it says will help align their APIs with current and emerging standards for the chosen language of technology.
All of this adds up for us at RutterKey. We are seriously committed to being at the forefront of IFS functionality. Stay tuned for the new IFS IoT connector white paper from the experts at RKS – COMING SOON!
