Your salesperson is giving his all to drum up your manufacturing business. But still, you are having problems meeting customers’ demands, and you can’t figure out why? The company’s production holdups are increasing, product quality is dropping, delivery schedules are not being met, and the customer satisfaction rate is also dropping.
Well, if such is the case with your manufacturing facility, these are common warning signs you need to implement an ERP for Manufacturing Industry. In this article, you will learn some common signs that your manufacturing company must deploy an ERP.
- You Can’t Access Data Quickly
Is your manager aware of the material costs required for fulfilling a customer’s order? Do you know what inventory is stored in the warehouse? Do you know what your gross margin is?
It’s crucial for the management to access this type of business data immediately to gain valuable insight for operating the business effectively. 360-degree visibility over every aspect of the manufacturing business in real-time is an absolute requirement that can be met by implementing an ERP system. Waiting for manual report generation can slow down your decision-making process and reduce the company’s overall productivity.
- Your Inventory Counts are Inaccurate
Inaccurate inventory records are one of the significant factors impacting every part of manufacturing operations. Excess inventory can overuse storage space, tie up working capital, and be prone to damage or becoming obsolete. On the other hand, insufficient inventory can halt your production process, increase shipping costs, and delay customer deliveries while decreasing customer satisfaction.
An ERP system with barcode scanning can help a manager accurately track inventory from vendors to final customers at multiple points of the journey. The software guarantees absolute inventory count accuracy, efficient working capital deployment, and increased customer satisfaction.
- Information is not Available to Promise Functionality
It is particularly crucial for the apparel industry and companies having multiple offshore manufacturing plants. Suppose management doesn’t have an accurate picture of all WIP inventory residing in various manufacturing plants for final assembly in a single master location. In that case, it will be impossible for the sales team to do their job and promise timely deliveries.
A manufacturing industry-specific ERP system can accurately track different types of inventory, including raw materials, work-in-progress inventory, safety stocks, subassemblies, and finished goods across multiple locations. Real-time visibility of inventory’s amount, type, and location across the company can provide accurate delivery dates to final customers.
- Constant Production Scheduling Problems
The success of your manufacturing business relies on your ability to manufacture products profitably and deliver them on time. If you don’t know what machines are available, if you have enough workers, or what raw materials are stored, you will be unable to meet the production deadline.
A fully-integrated Manufacturing ERP India will have Master Production Scheduling (MPS) modules that can automate the process of having required materials, equipment, and workers at the right place and amount to produce correct quantities and meet production deadlines. The system’s planning function will extract actual supply and demand data and forecast to deliver accurate production plans.
- Unable to Work Remotely and Access the Data
In today’s rapidly changing market, the sales team needs to go for off-site visits to understand customers’ and prospects’ behavior. With a cloud-based ERP application, sales reps can have remote access to pricing, availability, and delivery information when meeting customers and prospects. This immediate access to remote data will provide a competitive advantage to your sales team and increase its close rate.
- Your System Doesn’t Play Well with Departments
Organic business growth can create silo departments, each having its systems and processes. For instance, the accounting department will manually record sales or return orders, purchasing department might manually enter inventory data, and the warehousing department might track inventory using spreadsheets.
Multiple systems running on various databases can lead to a major disaster with potential errors and wastage of time. An ERP system can integrate each department function into a single database providing 360-degree visibility company wide.
Concluding Thoughts!
It’s never been the right time to invest in manufacturing ERP software. Even small manufacturing units can invest easily in cloud-based ERP systems. With these systems, you don’t need to invest in IT staff since the vendor will handle maintenance and upgrades. If any above-discussed sign sounds familiar, know that your manufacturing unit needs an ERP application.
