Discrete Manufacturing White Papers and Demos

In this turbulent market, leading industry analysts suggest that manufacturers stabilize their respective businesses, protecting them from excessive risk and ensuring that the enterprise has the liquidity necessary to weather the crisis.

When comparing ERP systems, functionality should be considered against the backdrop of the entire package - its technology and its vendor. Only by doing so can manufacturers ensure they make a right and lasting choice.

Today's manufacturing enterprise is challenged by rising material costs, increasing competition, and ever-changing customer requirements. If a manufacturer's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is not up to par, these companies are faced with dizzying levels of complexity, duplication of effort, and in the worse cases, poor quality and customer service. This paper describes the warning signs that an ERP system is killing a business, and suggests how companies can thrive with a new approach to business systems.

Small and mid-sized pharmaceutical manufacturers are struggling to manage large group purchase organization (GPO) contracts, process heavy volumes of chargeback submissions and ensure pricing policies are fully compliant with regulatory requirements.

In this paper we respectfully present our conclusion, namely that some LEAN initiatives can be hugely strengthened with a synergistic ERP implementation and vice versa, whereas in other cases the two efforts should really be viewed as separate initiatives and managed independently from each other. This is, however, not an open ended "it depends on what you want" answer; we conclude that specific LEAN initiatives will eventually fail without considerable attention to specific ERP aspects but that other specific LEAN initiatives and specific ERP functionality have little in common.

In the years leading to 2000, many manufacturers realized it was necessary to prepare for a potentially disruptive transition in the IT functions when the turn of the century arrived. With thoughts of internal systems not functioning properly - or even stopping the manufacturing processes altogether - action was required.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) continues to emerge as the dominant technical platform for building next generation business applications. The potential of SOA to transform enterprise software applications has been well documented within leading industry trade publications. This white paper will attempt to cut through the hype surrounding the technology by (1) examining the manufacturing pains that are driving the conversion to service-oriented business applications, (2) breaking down the essence of SOA, (3) focusing on the relevance of SOA as a tool for continuous business process improvement, and (4) comparing and contrasting the Made2Manage SOA product development strategy with that of other ERP vendors.

ERP solutions are data-driven. This is arguably the most beneficial technology feature because it alerts users to the specific inventory needs right down to quantities and timing. The right ERP tool can analyze historic and current data such as customer orders, inventory balances, usage/shipment of each product, seasonal trends, etc. and apply these insights to future inventory predictions. Armed with this knowledge, manufacturers can make more intelligent decisions regarding how much inventory to keep in stock and how best to respond to customer demand, regardless of seemingly unpredictable fluctuations. This help ensure investments are being made in the right place and that operations remain efficient.