Suggestion on a new article

I have asked my viewers suggestion for a new article to be posted on my blog. I have two ideas at present and I can prioritise the ideas based on feedback from consultants. 

The first idea is Costing Concepts: Product costing remains as an albatross in the neck of any ERP manufacturing consultant. It is very important to the customer. However it is one of the most difficult topic to address. The costing issues start from the proposal phase. The first question to be addressed is What is the costing method that I should recommend to the customer? 

The decision on costing method will decide the manufacturing method to be recommended. If the costing method is to be period moving average (for example), then the manufacturing method has to be necessarily OPM (Oracle Process Manufacturing). On the other hand if the costing method is Transaction based averaging, then the manufacturing method will have to be discrete manufacturing. 

The manufacturing processes and concepts associated with Process Manufacturing is distinctly different from those associated with Discrete manufacturing. So is the inventory valuation and the inventory accounting. 

In the article on costing concepts I plan to cover the 'Costing Continuum' starting with Specific costing at one end and standard costing at the other end. I will cover the business advantages and disadvantages of each. I also want to stress the fundamental point that all forms of costing methods are necessarily 'Averaging' in nature and it is futile to spend too much time on identifying the 'Accurate costing method'. 

The second idea relates to Solution Architecture. I had some experience as a solution architect for a global retail giant. My focus is on differentiating the Solution Architecture from Enterprise architecture (Don't worry, I won't make it complex) and then move on to the topic of Solution architecting for ERP implementations. 

Solution architecting consists of different architecting elements including Application architecture, Information architecture, Security architecture, Operational architecture and so on. In my article I intend to give a brief overview of each of these with some basic examples. I also want to throw open my point that currently in most of the ERP implementations, while we talk of 'Solution architecting', we end up doing only the 'Application Architecture' part of the Solution architecture. 

A good Solution Architecture will have many advantages like identifying the key risks early in the project, and identifying getting on board the key players in the Implementation team very early in the project. I also have given an option for you to chose a topic that is close to your heart and which is disturbing you the most. In case you chose the 'Other' option, enter your choice as 'Comment' to this article.