Manufacturing ERP Software: What Is It?

“Manufacturing ERP Software”. If you’ve been around manufacturing for any length of time, particularly if you’re a manager or if you’re in an IT department, you’ve probably heard this phrase mentioned somewhere. It seems quite a mouthful and is in fact rather catchy.

What does it really mean?

ERP stands for “Enterprise Resource Planning”. If you look at this web site you’ll find ERP includes management tools for a number of areas, including Financials, Customer Relation Management, Scheduling/Advanced Planning, Quality Assurance/Management, Supply Chain Management, Plant Level Performance Reporting, Business Intelligence, and Inventory, Warehouse and Distribution Management.

Manufacturing ERP looks at the entire organization as a whole, giving access to tools across the board for better managing the entire enterprise, not just one aspect of it. There’s nothing piece-meal about it. While it covers a number of different areas, that these areas interact isn’t something that can safely be ignored.

The problem with a lot of ERP software systems is that they’re either “canned” and users have to change how they do things to fit processes and such into the software’s box, or the software needs to be “configured” for the enterprise, which can take six months or more.

A custom-tailored ERP software system built from a well-constructed framework can take a lot less time to develop, be much less expensive, and can be designed to fit the organization’s needs, not the other way round.

This is what organizations really need anyway.

GPS and Scheduling Your Shipping

The majority of cell phones available today have built-in GPS functionality. While many phones that are manufacturer-specific and those that are much simpler only have GPS available for e911 functionality, phones which run the Windows Mobile operating system are apt to have GPS functions available for the user. Along with the applications which came with the phone and those available for retail, it’s also possible to develop programs for these phones via Microsoft’s development tools.

Custom-tailored production scheduling software can also involve using custom cell phone applications to ensure shipping occurs correctly. When a shipment is delivered the driver would turn on the cell phone and start a specially-built program. This program uses GPS to find the driver’s position, connect to the internet and, back at the factory, automatically record where the driver is and what time he or she is there.

There are many other possible aspects to this kind of software. The cell phone could also be used as a tracking device. If the driver is given "waypoints" such as specific rest and break liocations, these could also be logged back at the factory as check-in locations. This ensures the driver is where he or she is supposed to be.

One point about GPS software, even GPS software that is custom-built, is that it can be … what’s the word … persnicketty. It’s not so much the software as it is the GPS system itself. The satelites are located around the equator. Inside a building the signals from the satelites can be quite weak and the further you get from the equator the weaker those signals become. It takes signals from 3 – 4 satelites for a GPS receiver to calculate correct latitudes and longitudes. Within a wood-framed house at 41 degrees north, this author has found that while 4 satelites are available within the south end of the house, only one satelite can be seen within the north end of the house.

When working with GPS it’s important to acknowledge the system’s limitations. The system is good, it works, and it can obviously be made to work with production scheduling software. It just requires a lot of patience.

GPS and Manufacturing Software

I’m currently working on an application for Windows Mobile 6.1 which will allow drivers to login to a company’s custom-tailored software package while logging the driver’s location and the time he or she was at that location. One question I was asked about this was, “Isn’t this a bit intrusive?”

I don’t believe so. What’s really the difference between this and that same driver getting a signature from someone at a given location, along with a time-stamp on a piece of paper? There’s not much difference whatsoever, except that the other individual isn’t giving away a signature that could subsequently be used in an identity theft.

Asian automaker love bells, whistles, indicator lights, and charts and graphs. But early on, they drew the line at allowing electronic signatures on electronic documents as they felt they simply weren’t good enough. A real signature, even one with a wax sealm was considerably better for them. They’ve given in to electronic signatures recently. However, a GPS tracker with a time-stamp would actually be a better concept for their personal and manufacturing cultures.

Different cultures, both manufacturing and personal, require different software needs. This is why custom-tailored software is such a much better fit for manufacturers today.

Canned Software: What’s The Reality?

Let’s say you need software to run a cash register. You look around and find that even a big-box office supply mega superstore carries the whole thing in a box; Computer tower, monitor, mouse and keyboard, the cash drawer, a barcode scanner with a stand, even one of those nifty little receipt printers. The software in the box is also in a box, and has a whole list of features on the back of said box. You, or some teenager in the neighborhood who’s at least good with video games, sets it up in the store and you’re on your way.

Then you realize everything, including the banana bread your sister made in the rented and health-inspected kitchen on the east side, has to have a barcode label. So you need another printer, and some of those stickers on letter-sized wax paper so you can print the barcode labels. Which keep coming off. Or worse, when little kids with sticky fingers picks up that banana bread with a high-pitched, “But I want some!” The accounting side of the software has a few reports for accounting, but your accountant seems to think you need others. Taking an inventory is clunky at best … what you wouldn’t give for a crew with those handheld scanners like at the big supermarket, eh? Your staff keeps changing settings to create a “best” workflow for whomever is working at the time, adding new items is more a chore than it should be, and the only one who can get the whole system to work right is your twelve-year-old daughter.

True story, except that I wasn’t “some teenager in the neighborhood who’s at least good with video games” … And now that the store is hiring non-family members as staff, they want to know how to give everyone their own login. Honestly, I think I’m going to need to wipe the hard drive and start over. But first I need to backup the database …

Custom-tailored software would have prevented all of this. Even in a retail situation, canned software has a tendency to force the owners or managers of the business to change their workflow to match the software. This may be fine for word processing and spreadsheet programs, but when you get down to business with a business, this type of thing can be frustrating at best.

Let’s say you need a scheduling system. You pull out the “business”-grade software that came pre-installed on your “business”-grade computer and have a look. Basically, you can draw lines on groups of days. You could do that with a spreadsheet and get away with it. Still, you’ve got resources, tasks, … hmm, 3D gantt charts, very cool … Oh, “resources”  are people … that’s odd …

But what happens if you change something? What hapens if things need to work through in a different sequence? Can the software work through the changes and come up with a valid solution?

A better question would be, does the software follow your business and how it works, or are you being forced into the box the software came in?

The situation will likely be the former than the latter. That’s why custom-tailored software will always work better for your business. Unless that is, you’re just writing a letter.

“My Production Scheduling is rather simple …”

Is it? Is the production scheduling you need to do rather simple? You’ve been making those awnings and those canvas boat covers for years. And the crew in the sewing room can repair those damaged rental tents in no time flat. What in the world would you need a Production Scheduling software system for?

Well frankly, you need it for a lot of reasons.

In a lot of locations a tent and awning shop is seasonal. New orders can come it at any time through the year, and if the shop has a booth at the spring home & garden show there might be dozens of new awning orders. But then there’s the seasonal awning business. Awnings are stored in the winter at your storage facility and installed in the spring. Installations could easily take a month. Repairs have to be made if anything is found to be damaged prior to installation (danged mice …) Through the summer the tent rental season is just hopping, what with graduations in May, weddings and other events in the summer, and the fall festivals. In the fall the awnings have to be collected from the homes they were installed on in the spring, inspected for damage (high winds and driving rains can be nasty), dry-cleaned, and packed for the winter storage. Winter is also the best time to get all those tents inspected for damage from usage.

In all that we didn’t even mention the boat covers …

How are you keeping track of all this now? When the Mayor’s house calls and wants their awnings installed tomorrow morning as the Governor is coming for dinner and all three installation crews are already booked, how do you rearrange the schedule to accomodate such an event without going through all kinds of discontent?

If you just happened to have a Production Scheduling system with a bit of artificial intelligence to handle such matters, it would make life so much easier.

It’s a matter of perspective. You may not believe you need Production Scheduling software. But you very well might.

Think about it.

Production Scheduling Software: Not Just for Automated Manufacturing

For a year or so, from 2000 to 2001, I worked in a facility having hundreds of workers and almost zero automated processes in manufacturing. Faraday was a company that turned 125 that year, manufacturing synchronized clocks, modular and customized fire alarm control panels, and horns and strobes for those fire alarm systems. The majority of the manufacturing, sheet metal forming, welding and painting, horn and strobe assembly and testing, control panel circuit board assembly, and the final assembly of the control panels, these were all done by hand. The only real automated processes were some of the parts inserted on the circuit boards, and the wave soldering of the finished boards.

Each area had its own scheduler, its own schedule nearby showing workers and supervisors what was needed and when. We tried developing an automated scheduling system while I was there but it wouldn’t have helped by that point. Faraday was absorbed into Cerberus Pyrotronics the following year.

Part of the problem was an overall resistance to change. Some of the people in the facility had been there for decades. Some of the products, particularly the clocks and the older modular fire alarm control panels, had also been around for decades. Those of us working in R&D were working on smaller panels having embedded processors (8051-based, for those readers interested). We were making these panels as flexible as we could through a front panel programmability feature, and had started working on networking the panels for larger installations. But these weren’t seen by some as as solid products as the old standby.

The same went for the scheduling of the manufacturing. It was all done by hand on paper, with instructions being distributed as to what needed to be built and when it needed to be shipped.

Could Faraday have benefited from automated production scheduling software? Those of us who were in R&D thought so. The manufacturing operation was clunky at best, with the most modern piece of equipment being a new high-end wave soldering machine, about 15 feet long, with all kinds of features and abilities. Everything else was rather ancient, including the parts-insertion units for circuit board assembly.

Since replacing all that equipment with automated manufacturing was prohibitively expensive, Production Scheduling software to schedule the workers and their processes would have certainly brought a better efficiency to the facility overall. This would have certainly been helpful in regards to priority projects, and R&D projects needing one-time assembly of multiple panels for testing.

Yeah, that was an interesting job. I sure don’t miss all the bells, whistles and flashing lights though.

‘Roll Your Own’ Software; Worth It?

At some point in almost every discussion about purchasing software for a business, someone will think or even say, “Why not just make our own? I mean, we have all these IT people … it should be easy for one of them. Won’t take any time at all and it’ll save us money.”

Yes, it will take time, and it’s doubtful you’ll save any money whatsoever.

Software development takes time. Someone somewhere has sat down and figured out every piece of software you’ve ever used and they’ve done it from scratch. From solitaire games, to presentation software, to the software on the cash register at the grocery store, these applications have gone through multiple permutations over the years to get to how they operate today. Someone had to work through all the initial mechanics of what the software should do, came up with all the features, created the relational database, made it all work, debugged it, beta tested it, reworked it to get rid of the bugs …

This all takes time. A lot of time. A lot of hard work and patience.

And how much do you pay those IT folks? $15 an hour? Maybe $20 an hour? If they spend a total of six months working on this software just to get it running, how much does that work out to be?

Unless you plan to sell the finished software when you’re done developing it, there’s really no point in reinventing the wheel. There are developers out there, freelance and those in software companies, who do this every day for a living. The software you’re looking at developing has likely already been developed multiple times by multiple companies who have a history with that software and can do it quite well. Do you really think anything developed in-house will be able to stand up in comparison.

Probably not.

Software that’s custom-tailored, developed from a framework with customizable modules, by those who know what they’re doing … that’s the real deal. You’ll get a quicker turnaround, you’ll get exactly what you want, and it will look and act like the professional software you’d planned for in the first place.

Isn’t that what you really want anyway?

A Spreadsheet Is Not A Database

There are some serious misconceptions about how to best use certain types of software. It’s rather common now to see CEOs, financial wizards and others use presentation software as simply a place for their notes. Too often, what’s on the screen could have been given to the audience members to read instead of the presentation software being used as it was intended; To visually augment what is being said. All those bullet points on all those screens … it’s just not right.

Likewise, many office workers and managers look at a spreadsheet program as a database instead of the accounting tool it was meant as. The first spreadsheet program was called VisiCalc and, as it’s name implies, its intent was for calculating visually. It was never intended to simply hold data. However, that’s what many people use it for. They then wonder later why they can’t get it to do what’s necessary once growth occurs and other features are needed.

A database can not only store data in table structures, those structures can also be made “relational”. An table containing orders might only contain the order number and the date it was initiated. Another table might provide customer names and addresses, simply because each customer might have multiple orders. Another table might then contain order details, or lists of the items within the orders listed in the Orders table. And finally, a view might tie all these together so each individual order can be viewed as a single record.

A spreadsheet can’t do that, because a spreadsheet isn’t a database.

As in carpentry or auto work, computers are also best operated by using the right tool for the job. Maybe it’s time to step away from the spreadsheet.

Custom Terminology in Manufacturing Software

“We need to change everywhere it says ‘Product’ to ‘Asset’.”

“They want to see the word ‘Scrap’ instead of ‘Waste’.”

“Under Locations … let’s see … they store assets in vans and warehouses, but since the warehouses have shelves and bins and the vans don’t, and the vans aren’t physically attached to a given warehouse, the warehouses and vans have to be set up differently …”

These are real conversations which happened in the past week or so while developing custom-tailored manufacturing software for certain clients. That’s how detailed things can get. Virtually everything is flexible, anything can be changed, and if your Product is an Asset, so be it.

It’s a given that any company, particularly those with a long history, have developed their own internal culture. With that culture, an overall terminology has also developed within the overall workflows of the company. If canned software is then introduced as a management or reporting tool within that culture, how effective can that software possibly be if the software causes terminology, and ultimately cultural, changes?

Custom-tailored software is by far more appropriate as the software is built to fit within the already-existing culture and its built-in terminology. And certainly, workers and managers are going to be more willing to use software which doesn’t force them to make changes to their workflows in any way.

Besides, ‘Scrap’ sounds much better than ‘Waste’ anyway.