On February 6th Global Shop Solutions will be giving our first quarterly webcast. Each quarter, one of these webcasts will be highlighting a business goal and, how Global Shop One-System ERP Solutions™ can help businesses achieve that goal. This week’s topic is “Trust Global Shop for Increased Sales.” (more…)
Global Shop’s Project Management module and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) system have become industry-leading tools in the Engineer-to-Order (ETO) ERP market. GS Project Management replaces multiple manual systems in MS Excel™ and MS Project™. With GS Project Management, Global Shop customers can look at costs and schedules of complex projects in real-time through a simple, integrated interface.
An early adopter of Global Shop’s ETO ERP system, FIMA Peru is an engineer-to-order, make-to-order manufacturer that provides (more…)
Are the functions of a manager truly different in a lean manufacturing environment when compared with a traditional management structure? Of course they are. It is all a matter of the degree to which each incorporates production variables of their specific models that they will differ in some ways, and don’t differ very much at all in other ways. It’s important, though, to understand these differences for seeing what model—lean or traditional—works best in your own shop for managing people and processes.
So what are the differences? In a lean manufacturing environment production is based on real customer demand. In a traditional manufacturing environment production is based on what you hope to sell. (more…)
By their nature, job shops are often, as they say, “all over the place” with what they do. Usually, they have to perform multiple tasks with limited resources. Diverse orders come and go with great speed. Their production requirements are such that each order could be something new, with engineering changes often coming on the heels of the order submission to the floor. With so much coming and going, scheduling and tracking is a vital function in job shops. When an order is delayed or otherwise neglected, there are usually heavy costs associated with it—loss of revenue, loss of material, loss of time, and loss of customers. It’s that last one that’s the real biggie.
Tracking software enables companies to track production items from sales order to shipping (and sometimes beyond), and also identify their costs. This type of manufacturing tool works real-time to track and record each and every transaction within the process, ensuring accountability for all the resources that are used in the job shop. In the best systems that are part of larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems, everything in the job shop can be tracked—from the labor and resources used for the job, to the status of the job, and the status of the shipment. (more…)
When you form solid raw materials to produce things you can easily touch, see, and/or count, you are most likely what is called a discrete manufacturer. Discrete manufacturing is often characterized by the making of individual or separate units, which is typically low in volume and very high in complexity. That is to say, in discrete manufacturing you are often either building single parts or assemblies of several other parts, with such assemblies often themselves even going into the manufacture of ever more complex products or machines.
This concept is distinguished from what is called a process manufacturing model that often involves notions such as formulas and mixing. Such process can be found in the production of items such as pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, foodstuffs, petroleum products, and so forth. (more…)
With so many different ERP systems to choose from, identifying the right software package can be a daunting and time-consuming task. However, given the cost, integration and long-term impact of ERP systems, you can’t invest too much time in the evaluation process.
The best approach involves using one of several online tools to sift through all the different vendors and narrow the list down to three to five finalists. Once you have a short list of finalists, conduct extensive interviews with each company and “demo” their software to see which one best fits your needs. Be sure to ask each company to come to your location for a test run. If they insist that you demo the software at their site, it should raise a red flag about their approach to customer service.
When evaluating different packages, look for the “four C’s” of an ERP system: (more…)
In the first three parts of our on-going series on manufacturing scheduling, we covered a wide swath of issues related to improving accuracy, visibility, flexibility, reducing costs, and preventing bottleneck. The crux of these solutions is all found in one place—enterprise resource planning software (ERP). Today, let’s examine just how scheduling through ERP is achieved.
By freeing up your time, ERP scheduling allows you to make better decisions and become more of a proactive manager of people and resources. It redefines your role, elevating it to a more strategic position and increasing your value to the company. (more…)
In the previous blog installments on manufacturing scheduling, we spent some time providing an overview of what the issues are with scheduling/planning, and what models might work best in specific shop situations. Incorporating enterprise resource planning software, we discovered, is an excellent way to make life a little bit easier on the scheduling/planning side. Today, we’ll look at some solutions on a point-by-point basis.
So, just how does ERP scheduling, in fact, make your life easier?
Through a variety of features and functions, ERP scheduling evolves from a hair-pulling exercise in frustration into a streamlined, low-stress process that efficiently and effectively guides and directs all the activities that need to occur on the shop floor. The most important of these features and functions include: (more…)
Most companies try to solve manufacturing scheduling problems by hiring more schedulers to manage the chaos. But all that does is increase overhead costs, add to the complexity of the scheduling process, and increases the number of schedules. Fortunately, there is an easier, better and much more cost-effective way. In Part 2 of our continuing blog series on manufacturing scheduling, we’ll examine some of these ways in greater detail.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is specifically designed to automate, streamline, and reduce the stress of scheduling work orders in a busy manufacturing environment.
ERP software serves as a highly sophisticated central communication hub for all the activities in a manufacturing business. It consists of different modules that handle everything from estimating to job scheduling to final delivery and billing, as well as the financial aspects of work generation, purchasing, inventory management, administrative overhead, and all the accounting and financial activities. (more…)
Today, we begin a multi-part blog series on one of the most important, and most stressful, jobs in manufacturing—scheduling. With the shortening of lead times from customers, along with the fluctuations in capacity, maintenance, labor, and materials, it’s a wonder that most manufacturing scheduling works efficiently and productively. However, there are some tricks of the trade when it comes to improving scheduling processes, and in Part 1 we will introduce some of those.
Ask anyone in a manufacturing or project-driven company who has the most difficult job and without hesitation they will tell you: the scheduler/planner. Foolproof scheduling is critical to the smooth operation of most companies. Yet, planning and scheduling the workflow is like trying to juggle 150 different balls all at once. Only the balls are all different shapes and sizes, some move faster or slower than others, and while you’re juggling, other people are constantly pulling some of the balls out of the air and throwing new ones at you. (more…)
