How to Create a Modern and Effective Manufacturing Environment
Every type of business has risk.
Inventory-centric companies are often 30 days away from bankruptcy. If their stock doesn’t sell, they don’t pay their suppliers and they are out of business. Sales trends are difficult to predict given they rely on so many other social and economic factors. Even the best forecasts can be overturned by a natural disaster, a suddenly tanking stock market or a political failure that worries consumers about the future.
Manufacturers face some of these risks, but as they are higher up the food chain, they must carry the burden of their customers’ concerns, too. This can mean unpredictable demand. That negatively affects staffing levels, parts purchasing, warehouse and shop floor space allocation, investments in machinery maintenance and upgrades, and more.
While ERP solutions help manufacturers collect a plethora of data, the complexity of accurately predicting product demand is matched by the complexity of the data captured. It is a challenge to make the best use of your data with the most reliable outcomes. You need solutions that will make your ERP data more manageable and revelatory in predicting product demand, price sensitivity, affordable materials sourcing, etc.
As with most things in life, organization and planning can have a big impact on manufacturing efficiency and sales success. Aberdeen Group has studied the best ways to conduct modern manufacturing and found that market-leading manufacturers are nearly twice as likely as their less successful counterparts to employ standardized procedures for production planning and execution.
And ERP helped get them to that maturity in process creation and management…toward greater efficiency, effectiveness and growth.
To learn more about the latest research findings, read the “Creating a Modern, Effective Manufacturing Environment with ERP” white paper.