The plant is running smoothly, all machines are operating at capacity and scrap has been reduced to the lowest levels experienced in the history of the plant. The shop schedule is running fine due to the introduction of an enterprise resource planning software system—but something just doesn’t seem right. The expected ROI is falling a bit short of expectations and on-time delivery is still not what it should be. You wonder what it is you’ve overlooked, what area of the operation is throwing the proverbial kink in the works.

Then, one day, you just happen through the front office and it’s as if you had been shot through with a bolt of lightening. All around you are the vestiges of what you had been trying to eliminate on the shop floor. Paperwork batches, duplicated efforts, long searches for missing or incomplete data in files. In short, while the company had considered no-stone-left-unturned in its quest for shop floor efficiency through enterprise resource planning, it had not completely considered the impact a wasteful front office would have upon the ROI. Indeed, front office waste is a considerable reason why many enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations take longer than expected to complete.

What can you do to ensure a successful and quick implementation of your ERP software system, and maximize your ROI? See how process improvements can be made in the front office. Here are four helpful tips: (more…)

On the one hand, you have the need for making the change to a manufacturing information system that will help you gain a competitive advantage. On the other hand, you’re faced with a wealth of anecdotal horror stories about the time and effort it takes to implement such a system. Confusion. Delays. Downtime. Many of the problems that you hear about seem to be common mantras from those companies that have had problems with ERP implementation.

By the volume of the protestations, it would appear that ERP implementation is nothing but trouble. However, it must be kept in mind that the old ’squeaky wheel’ adage rings most true here. That is to say, those majority of manufacturers that have little or no problems with ERP implementation are usually less vocal in public about their successes, while those that encounter difficulties are the first to complain.

What separates the successes from those less so? In a word: (more…)