Demands and supplies are radically different today with the pandemic affecting us in ways never imagined. Who imagined a year ago that we would all see household paper product shortages? We have unexpected changes in manufacturing as well. Products formerly with staple demands suddenly have demands we cannot meet or suddenly are no longer needed. According to a recent ERP report, the top reason for implementing an ERP in 2020 was to support company growth showing more businesses are using software for their increased demand. ERP is our toolset we use to adapt to these changes.
Set Your ERP System Up for Success
Look at your ERP settings. Be sure your component lead times and process flow times are up to date. Set up alternate components in your bills of material and the alternate routings you developed as you worked through your own shortages. ERP needs these basics in place to calculate available to promise dates and quantities when your customers call.
Automate Business Processes
Some find the process to check every customer order before acceptance takes more time now. Maybe it is time to look at robotic process automation (RPA)? Carefully looking at existing demand and your inventory and incoming supply chain and evaluating a variety of alternates is complex, but you want to be accurate and timely for your customers. Robotic processes can make the same evaluation, usually in less time, and will always keep to the script you define.
Receive an incoming purchase order from your customer with a requested product, quantity and date due. Use ERP to evaluate on-hand and on-order amounts for each component. How many days from component receipt through the required processes are required, and can the requested order be delivered? If yes, accept the order. If no, perform the evaluation again using alternate components or alternate routings to accept the customer order. RPA can continue to place component purchase orders and enter jobs into the factory schedule needed to support the new customer order. These are the same tasks done manually and sequentially today but using RPA they can be completed in seconds following your business rules.
Connect and Integrate Analytics Data Across the Supply Chain
Once the customer’s product order is complete, it needs to be delivered. Link your ERP to your outbound carriers’ systems. Within ERP calculate the best carrier for each order, automatically create the bill of lading and schedule a delivery. Let your customer know what to expect. Provide visibility through a portal or through an integrated link to their ERP. Your customers will appreciate the confidence their order is in process and will be on-hand to meet their requirements.
ERP systems contain tremendous quantities of data. Link your ERP to data from outside as well and use the integrated collections for powerful analytics. Instead of a static shop schedule, create a dashboard that shows your staff the optimal job to work on next based on real-time conditions. Track performance at every stage of your processes and compare the results to your standards. Modify those standards based on actual performance and adjust production schedules on the fly or take action needed at the first possible moment, when corrective action is needed. Direct the required change to the person who needs to change rather than to an executive who will need to make the same request through several layers of bureaucracy.
Streamline Existing Processes
These are not changes to ERP. These suggestions merely take our existing systems and make them more flexible, more responsive and faster to adapt to whatever new conditions arise. QAD, like other ERP systems, has capabilities we may have not yet needed but now we can learn to exploit those capabilities to serve customers even in these disruptive times.
