Losing control of your manufacturing business?
Here’s how you get it back.

by Peter Hemsley

Peter Hemsley

Disruption is not a dirty word. In technology, it simply means innovations that reinvent how consumers experience the world they live in.

With over a decade of sales and knowledge and active involvement in the IT industry, Peter Hemsley is a sales professional of the highest calibre with a deep understanding of digital disruption.

As an advocate for his clients and his team. Peter Hemsley is passionate about the creativity that drives disruption, he actively participates and motivates his team to deliver “gold standard” customer delight every time they engage with their customers.

His compendium of passion and knowledge gives him key insight to understanding how businesses operate and how to successfully provide customers with a relationship solution not just software.

The demands on manufacturers are growing by the day. The CEO of a Manufacturing Business must have ‘many irons in the fire’ simultaneously. They are expected to be the figurehead, but also someone with access to all the correct figures, in his or her head.

Shorter lead times and increased expectations around customisation are forcing many manufacturers to get more efficient with their manufacturing processes or lose business to the competition. Making the change is not easy, however; manufacturing is not traditionally a centre of nimbleness and innovation.

Having access to only some of the data for some of the time creates a situation in which important decisions are being made based on inadequate information. These cannot be informed decisions.

That’s how control of a Manufacturing Business is potentially lost.

An ERP System can help. The key to meeting the growing demands on manufacturing is better processes that are more agile and efficient. ERP can help with this evolution of manufacturing processes in several ways. But it can only do it if manufacturers change how they view their ERP systems.

1. Real-time reports

The complexity of project and production management that is asked of someone in a chief position and the endless demand for product development and configuration makes a steady stream of the latest data essential.

Data has a limited shelf-life and it can be dangerous to have to use dated data to make decisions for the here and now.

But what can be done if there is no time or resources available to harvest these figures as and when they occur? Immediate cross-functional reporting is more than an advantage. These days, it is essential.

ERP systems can improve manufacturing processes by delivering much-needed visibility in real-time to keep every part of this process working smoothly. ERP systems can connect directly with suppliers and partner systems to create better integration.

2. Flexibility, the Key to Survival!

Agility and a capacity for rapid modification is no longer merely a concern for Manufacturers.

In an unpredictable economic landscape, not even the titans of business are immune to the need to transform and improve quickly and constantly.

To remain relevant and competitive in the morphing manufacturing environment, businesses need to remain in a constant state of flux in a steady trajectory of evolution based on the latest data-driven feedback on productivity and unnecessary expenditure.

A flexible ERP allows a company to easily change and extend business process across the enterprise. A flexible ERP also significantly reduces and eliminates the need for ungainly manual processes and workarounds to meet business change.

3. Inventory, compliance and improved integration

Using the basic order and stock-related production management systems put in place when the company was still in its fledgeling stages can be compared to using a typewriter to send an email. It’s inadequate because these legacy systems do not provide any feedback that will allow you to know what you have to work with and how much there is to work with and until when.

With these older systems, it’s impossible to provide an accurate forecast of what needs to be supplied because there isn’t an accurate way to determine the demand. These systems are also hopelessly insufficient when it comes to ensuring quality control across supply chains and ensuring all the necessary compliances with all the relevant standards boards.

Breakdowns in communication, assumptions made by various misaligned management bodies and executive committees that are kept in the dark due to a lack of data and other information resources can spell disaster and discordance.

A modern ERP system allows clear communication across all channels and facilitates error-free transactions and production.
With its integrated system, ERP saves you time previously wasted synchronising all changes between multiple systems.

4. Customisation and individual needs

The future of commerce is increasingly customer-centric. Good business is all about keeping the promises you’ve made to your customers and safeguarding your brand and its reputation as best you can.

Management, planning and resource short-comings can often cause customers to not get what they have ordered within the period of time that they have expected it.

While keeping internal business processes running smoothly, ERP can also help you be prepared for any external situation.

ERP uses collected data to monitor customers, spot warning signs of inherent problems and provide you with insights on how to solve them before they even happen.

5. Supply Chain & Sales Management

Manufacturing Businesses must constantly enhance the machine and labour utilisation rates in their factories. Machinery no longer in use must be eliminated and equipment that is inefficient must be upgraded or replaced, but to stay on top of this process requires information, more specifically data, and where there is data, management is required.

Without this data, there is more governance based on guesswork.

But why do business off guesswork when there are effective enterprise resource planning solutions (ERPs) out there that larger manufacturers can use to gauge, manage and analyse the various aspects of their business.

Perhaps this is because there is a common misconception that it will be a complicated process to install the software and a complex system to manage.

The advanced analytics in modern ERP systems also can serve to improve manufacturing processes by discovering inefficiencies automatically through artificial intelligence.

There’s nothing short of an analytics and business intelligence revolution taking place right now, and manufacturers can take advantage of it to improve areas such as overall equipment effectiveness and drive process and quality improvement.

6. Access to analytics and a 360-degree view

A hands-on approach is still a fantastic way to run a business, but getting involved with all the different departments and their complex facets, while still keeping a grasp of outputs and inputs (with dated data) and other rabbit holes that can be fallen into, is no longer an option for the contemporary CEO.

A 360-degree perspective from your office in real-time, so there’s more time in the day to think of even more ways to improve your business.

ERP is the cornerstone for efficient manufacturers committed to constantly improving manufacturing processes. It tracks and delivers visibility, stores and processes data for insight, and connects operations both in and outside a business. In short, it is at the centre of any significant improvement in a company’s manufacturing processes.

Losing control of your manufacturing business? Here’s how you get it back.