Leveraged ERP Investment

Manufacturers that have implemented an ERP system have invested significant effort (and money) creating an enterprise software solution. Despite these investments, manufacturers often find their ERP systems do not provide the results they expected on the shop floor. ERPs often fall short because they are overly complex, difficult for shop floor employees to use, and rooted in traditional MRP batch-based processing. A manufacturing execution solution is designed to leverage an ERP investment, not replace it.
Manufacturing execution solutions address these issues by providing intuitive execution capabilities based on a real-time, lean execution philosophy. This means manufacturers get the best of both worlds—easy-to-use execution tools for the shop floor that also support planning decisions by continuously feeding real-time transaction information to the ERP. Manufacturing execution solutions share information with the ERP in real time, allowing the ERP to have an accurate representation of shop floor activities. With real-time visibility to execution, the ERP makes intelligent decisions about supply/demand matching and order promising.

Reduced Cost of Regulatory Compliance
Manufacturing environments are becoming increasing regulated. Whether the compliance requirement is for the FDA or Sarbanes-Oxley, the costs associated with achieving compliant processes can be excessive. With a rich transaction history that provides detailed audit trails and electronic approval processes, a manufacturing execution solution will facilitate compliant processes without excessive paperwork and manual work-arounds. Additionally, a manufacturing execution solution is designed to be responsive to change over time. This means that new regulatory requirements are easily met without system upgrades or customizations.

Personalized Manufacturing
Customer-specific manufacturing is a trend driving increased complexity and cost for today’s manufacturers. Customer specific bills of materials, routings and test instructions are challenging to manage, but can be a source of competitive differentiation. Manufacturing execution solutions respond to this challenge by offering personalization capabilities that meet today’s customer requirements and adapt to meet tomorrow’s unforeseen demands.
The ability to personalize a manufacturing execution solution is a key benefit—but not one that all applications offer. The greatest level of benefit will be achieved through a solution that accommodates personalization via configuration tool sets. With this type of platform, configurations can be made easily and cost-effectively. This means the manufacturers—not the solution vendors—truly own the system. With a flexible manufacturing execution solution, there is no custom coding required for configuration; changes carry over and workflow can be altered as needed after the system go-live. The result of this is that the system’s total cost of ownership is greatly reduced over the lifetime of the application.

Focused Technology Approach
With the most robust manufacturing execution solutions, nearly any station or work cell in the facility can be integrated into the system and either monitored, controlled or reported against. Machines, scales, gauges, statistical process control (SPC) systems, PLCs, label printers, serial devices, PDAs, automated material handling equipment, wired and wireless terminals, and RFID systems are integral parts of manufacturing execution—and the best manufacturing execution solutions will integrate seamlessly with all of them. Manufacturing execution solutions often feed multiple host systems and facilitate reporting beyond the current capabilities of many ERP systems.
Solving the problems inherent in today’s manufacturing environment is best accomplished using a modular technology approach. Manufacturing execution solutions start with bar code or RFID data acquisition to improve order visibility and extend beyond basic data collection as appropriate in each company’s individual situation. This allows for a right-sized application based on current business needs and areas requiring the most attention. Oftentimes, this provides self funding for future projects because ROI is generated quickly.