ERP for Industrial Manufacturing sector:
eresource ERP Complex equipment manufacturing organization comes under Industrial Manufacturing sector, which is very technology and price sensitive market. Needless to say the challenges faced by this sector for the steady business process are numerous.
As it is known that manufacturing is based on customer specification in Make to Order situation and translating customer specification into bill of material and bill of routing is a big challenge. There are even separate departments have been set up in some organizations to handle this activity. The ERP system have configured to order (CTO) functionalities where the design rules can be configured. It will be geared to handle any amount of complexity in design rule. Once the customer specifications are put into the system, the same should be automatically transformed into bill of material and routing.
ERP Manufacturing industries have a strong requirement for analyzing at the quotation stage. Normally the customer specifications are complex and lead time for manufacturing is high. It is a big challenge to quickly quote the right price and promise the delivery date based on material and capacity availability. The ERP system will greatly help in this regard. Since design rules can be configured through the ERP system, it will be possible to quickly translate customer demands into manufacturing requirements and hence, reduce the cost of making the product. Also it will help in keeping the due dates to the customers based on organization capabilities.
Since technologies are changing at a fast pace, the customers demand short delivery times from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). It is a real challenge to provide customer specific products at a short notices. The ERP system should be able to handle hybrid manufacturing scenarios (mix of make to stock and make to order) where they will take advantage of making the final product using Make to Order Scenarios (MTO) and reduce total time for delivery using the strong planning features of Make to Stock (MTS).
The technology sensitive market requires close collaborations between vendors, contractors and subcontractors at the design level. Design level collaboration between different parties using the B2B interface of the business application will be of special help. Without use of sophisticated ERP systems, such collaboration cannot be effective.
The management of spare parts is also important. Spare parts are characterized by both Independent and Dependent demand. While the former coming directly from the market and the later from the manufacturing of the final product.
These scenarios are normally characterized by strong after sales service. ERP systems can really help in devising the service schedules, collating the service information from the market and providing the same as feedback to the design and manufacturing department, quick diagnosis and rectification of faults through knowledge management and managing after sales contracts with customers.
The whole process of manufacturing has to be taken up as a project with demand pegging throughout the manufacturing structure. This indicates there is a strong need of information exchange across the manufacturing project and at all levels.
Also Read – ERP Software in Mumbai