Don’t miss the first part of this series: How Cloud ERP Solutions Will Revolutionize Your Manufacturing.
With our latest update, DEAR’s complete suite of cloud-based ERP tools can now go toe-to-toe with the most robust legacy ERP solutions — without the hassle, manual work and headaches. It’s everything you need for complex manufacturing processes, in one place, tied to everything else you need to run your business: accounting, sales, inventory and more.
We’re here to give you a sneak peek at what this cutting-edge manufacturing solution looks like.
The quick version? It’s streamlined, automated and easy to manage.
Let’s start with a sale. When a sale is entered into your system (automatically if you’ve connected your sales features), the software checks your stock and inventory to see if a product is available. If not, it automatically creates a production order. You can then authorize that order.
Then, the program checks whether you have enough raw materials to fulfill that production order — if not, it automatically sends out a purchase order for the required amount. The software also calculates the required release date and determines when the process needs to start to meet the required due date.
When everything’s ready to go, you can start a production run to begin completing that production order. You can even auto-pick resources, so that all your resources — from goods in certain bins, to machines, to workers available for a task — are allocated to the run automatically based on availability.
The catchwords here are efficient management and easy visibility into production. All of these tasks are instantly recorded in their relevant categories, so that purchases are listed within transactions or allocated resources are marked as “consumed” within your resource planner. You can also load the BOM to get a complete overview of the production run. There’s also a handy overview chart where you can see all simultaneous and scheduled production runs or reorder them by simply clicking and dragging within the scheduler.
So, looking for more details into how this all works? Here’s a breakdown of the parts that enable this unrivalled Advanced Manufacturing software.
DEAR’s Advanced Manufacturing solution has two main facets: settings and production planning. While manufacturing management is necessarily a complex process, this clear breakdown and easy oversight makes it an approachable, easy-to-digest process.
Production settings need to be configured when you first implement manufacturing management. These provide the guardrails for all the work you actually implement through the tool. That includes settings for:
– Factory calendar
– Logistics paths
– Work center
– Resources
– Bill of Materials (BOM)
All these systems interconnect seamlessly to set a solid foundation for your manufacturing process.
The calendar settings control all time requirements for production, from work hours to holidays to break times. It passes all its information to functions like the scheduler and capacity planner — ensuring that no work is ordered on a weekend, for example. Once you’ve inputted your desired time ranges, the calendar tool handles the rest.
Your logistics path essentially connects your warehouse and retail functionality and defines the route for all components required to manufacture your goods. It details a path for tasks and locations from bins full of components to shop floors.
The work center settings enhance that setup by defining exact bins for a component pick and identifying a specific place of production, or work center. Essentially, it helps you define the right production center for each component and add specificity to your identified logistics path.
Your resources settings help you define all the resources that you have available to take part in the production of a good. That includes people, raw components and machines. You can even fine-tune settings to define capacity maximums or whether the resource is finite. Best of all, the hours you’ve already defined in your calendar can be automatically associated with your resources to define capacity. By adding associated costs for each resource and a dedicated expense account, you’ll enable analysis and assessment capabilities, too — for instance, the program can automatically calculate costs, allocate appropriate resources and calculate minimum cycle durations.
Next comes the all-important BOM for production. The Bill of Materials acts as a summary or recipe of how to produce your finished good, including lists of components, resources, operations and quantities required, broken down into steps. The system then can determine the order of each operation within available cycle times or whether adequate resources are available.
Identifying and configuring all these settings enables you to move smoothly into production itself, with the peace of mind that everything is set up in the most efficient way possible. All settings communicate relevant information to production processes, and the software automatically ensures that your process is as optimized and cost-effective as possible.
DEAR’s advanced manufacturing solution provides you with several tools for production (fed by the calendar, resources and other settings), including:
– Capacity planner
– Production scheduler
– Production order
All of these tools cover the needs of production processes, from the most simple to the most complex. They’re also geared to minimize cost, schedule manufacturing to ensure highest production and least downtime and ensure that you’re never behind on your schedule.
It’s manufacturing, as it should be in an ideal world.
For more details, check out these support articles:
– Getting started with our production module
– Managing production resources
Start your free 14-day trial today
Try DEAR for 14 days, completely free!