Category Archives: Manufacturing

It’s Time to Bring Sexy Back to ERP!

ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, used to be sexy. Designed as an extension of MRP (initially Material Requirements Planning but later Manufacturing Resource Planning), it was designed to automate the back-office functions that did not directly affect customers and the general public and also include product planning, manufacturing control, and distribution in addition to the basic inventory control and production planning capability that was found in the precursor MRP technology.

But that was in the early days back in the nineties when design, manufacturing planning, and distribution planning was still largely paper-based. Then came the noughts with e-business, e-commerce, CRM, SRM, and e-Sourcing. Then ERP became boring old back office software that no one wanted to talk about. If you could afford the new fangled front-end systems, you were a Fortune 500 / Global 3000, you already had ERP, and there wasn’t much to talk about.

But now things have changed. The prices for e-business, e-commerce, CRM, SRM, and e-Sourcing have come down, the mid-market is starting to become saturated with basic “e-” functionality, and the new mid-market manufacturers and distributors need an ERP to take those orders, send those invoices, and manage the inventory they need to produce to meet your JIT inventory requirements. But, until now, they’ve had two choices — either fork out high six-plus figures for a stripped down version of Oracle or SAP (and the expertise to get it installed and integrated) which likely won’t meet all of their needs, or a custom implementation of an open source package such as Compiere, which probably won’t meet all of their needs either (but at least won’t cost them the virtual arm and leg). And neither solution is sexy.

As per SI’s recent post on how Mid-Market Manufacturers and Distributors Need an ERP That Works!, the solution needs to support the needs of the mid-market manufacturer, distributor, and even retailer. These needs include the need to deal with electronic purchase orders from customers, real-time demand planning and order management when customers inquire about availability and ship dates, inventory management, electronic purchase orders to your suppliers, automated invoices from your suppliers, and automated invoices to your customers. Without an ERP that gives them these capabilities, mid-market manufactures and distributors are left in the dark ages.

But if an ERP is to truly be effective, it not only has to provide you with these capabilities, but it has to be easy to use, which would make it appealing, and eliminate a lot of the manual data processing and tactical processes that organizations with traditional ERP systems tend to drown in, which would make it exciting. And if you want to get the new ERP system widely adopted, it should be glamorous, trendy, and even a little bit risqué. And that is the very definition of sexy.

Will ERP be sexy again?

Mid-Market Manufacturers and Distributors Need an ERP That Works!

If you’re a mid-market manufacturer or distributor, times are tough.

Your big customers are adopting e-Procurement, Supplier Networks, and e-Invoicing and want to implement end-to-end Procurement and Invoice Automation to streamline processes and reduce operational costs.

Your component and raw material suppliers aren’t always on time, and if you are not on top of your inbound supply chain, a single missed delivery can put you weeks behind and cause you to lose critical orders with big customers.

And if demand suddenly surges or shipments get delayed, sales people and account managers need to know what can and can’t be promised or the company will look bad if multiple account managers collectively make delivery commitments beyond what the organization can deliver.

How do you meet these needs?

If you’re a mid-size organization, you probably can’t afford a full SAP, Oracle, or other Enterprise-class ERP solution with all of the bells and whistles because they come with a seven figure price tag, which leaves you with few choices. Either you choose a lesser ERP, with a price-tag in your price-range, or you go open source, and pay someone to configure and link it to your systems (as most open source never works “out-of-the-box”).

However, all you get with a basic ERP is basic enterprise resource planning functionality. There is no support for e-Invoicing and order automation, no support for advanced real-time forecasting and material planning, and no supply chain visibility.

As a result, in order to service your big customers, you have to either join a Supplier Network, and probably pay a fee for every invoice you send, or use the buyer’s e-Invoicing portal, and have your Accounts Receivable clerk create every invoice twice. After all, while there are lots of e-Procurement and Invoice Automation solutions for buyers, there’s few for distributors and manufacturers because e-order fulfillment systems just aren’t sexy.

In order to keep on top of your supply chain, you have to buy a separate inventory management system on top of a subscription to a real-time supply visibility system to get a grip on what you have, what’s coming in, and where your supply gaps are.

Then, because material planning is not real time and not integrated with order management, you need to buy a separate forecasting system. That’s even more dollars on top of the dollars that you need to spend for inventory management, order management, and the Supplier Network. If the organization could afford all that, the organization could afford the 7-figure ERP system that it couldn’t afford in the first-place.

That’s why mid-sized manufacturers and distributors need an ERP option that works. It has to be affordable, serve as the counterpart to buyer e-Procurement and invoice automation solutions, allow for visibility-based inventory management, provide full order management functionality, and allow for dynamically updated forecasts based upon changes in material availability, delivery dates, and buyer order forecasts.

It’s not sexy, but in order to have an efficient supply chain, all players in the supply chain have to be efficient. If solutions are produced for some players, but not others, the supply chain will continue to only be as strong as the weakest link.

Don’t Be a Smeghead! Adopt the 3 Rs Now Before You Yourself Become Scarce!

Starting today, your new mantra is Reuse, Recycle, Remanufacture and all of your sourcing efforts revolve around Design for Recycle because the raw materials your supply chain runs on are running out faster than oil and fresh water.

As per this recent article over on BBC Future on what is the world’s scarcest material, China, which produces up to 90% of the world’s rare earth metals that are vital in electronics production claims that its mines might run dry in just 15-20 year. At current utilization rates, we could be out of silver in 20 years (which is only good news if current lore is correct and you are a werewolf), platinum in 15 years (which is bad news for aspiring musicians everywhere), and indium, used in electroluminescent panels, LEDs, and semiconductors, in as little as 10 years!

Why? Because we don’t reuse, recycle, and remanufacture. Currently, US residents recycle a mere 25% of TVs and Computers and less than 10% of movie phones — which is where the majority of the rare earth metals mined every year end up! If we reclaimed all of the metals that went into all of the electronics we produced, it would likely be at least a century before we’d have to worry about running low on materials, as we’d only have to mine to meet incremental demand.

So if you think rare earth metals are expensive now, think about how expensive they are going to be as supply becomes even more restricted! Until SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have solved the everyday problems of space flight, merge to form Jupiter Mining Corporation, and build Red Dwarf, you’re going to have three choices:

  1. Completely switch product lines to something that doesn’t require rare earth metals — like fashion or low-tech household goods,
  2. Pay the ever increasing premium until your customers can’t absorb it and you go down with the corporate ship, or
  3. Spearhead a reuse, recycle, and remanufacturing effort with your customer and supply community to reclaim as many rare earth metals as you can and reduce your newly mined raw material requirements to the point where they can double in price and not affect your operating cost.

Obviously, choices #1 and #2 will both result in your position, and you, becoming a thing of the past — so unless you’re looking for a career change, only a Smeghead would choose anything but option #3.

Is MRO Inventory Bogging You Down? Maybe You Need a Bit of Xtivity? Part II

Yesterday, we finished Part I by asking What is Xtivity?

Simply put, Xtivity is a solution for your MRO Inventory Optimization Needs and only your MRO Inventory Optimization Needs. If your organization is regularly managing tens of millions of dollars of inventory, or more, you probably know that MRO Inventory is costing you Millions and your current ERP/MRP/CPG Inventory Management systems aren’t helping you curb these costs while making sure that the part is always there when you need it. (Because, in the MRO world, unlike the CPG world or back-office world, availability always trumps cost savings. If you’re a retailer and you are out of stock on 2% of your catalog, no big deal, especially when the average stockout rate is 8%, and if your supply cabinet runs out of toner when the CFO wants to print out 500 pages of financial reports, you can just send a low-wage employee to the local office supply store to pick up a replacement. It’s annoying, but the most it’s going to cost the organization is an hour of someone’s time and maybe a 20% markup on a $50 cartridge. Big whopping deal, NOT! But if it costs 1 Million a day to run the production line and the company’s entire factory workforce sits idle for three days while your repair technician waits for a part to be express shipped to the Brazil factory from a supplier in China, a single stock-out can be the difference between the organization turning a big profit and suffering a big loss for the quarter.)

Accepting this reality and realizing that traditional ERP/MRP/CPG Inventory Management systems weren’t going to solve this problem (which is typically solved by the average company by significantly overstocking a critical replacement part in multiple locations), ten years ago, Xtivity formed to do something about it and nine years ago launched one of the first SaaS solutions to address the issue.

The xIO Software-as-a-Service platform is a 100% web-based MRO Inventory Optimization Solution that can plug into your current inventory management and procurement solutions, suck in your inventory (related) data, pass it through a number of proprietary and statistical models and algorithms, developed by Dr. Stephen Pearce (formerly of Texas A&M and author of Strategic MRO: A Roadmap for Transforming Assets into Competitive Advantage) and refined over the last decade for optimal performance across all of the major MRO industries (including Pharmaceutical, Oil & Gas, Automotive, Power Generation, Pulp & Paper, Automotive, Food Manufacturing, and Transportation), and output, on a monthly basis (or any other regular interval that makes sense from an operational perspective) the optimal order point, order quantity, and average lead time required for each MRO inventory item (by location) — taking the client’s business rules into account. The net result is increased part and material availability and fill rate, accurate lead time calculations, and cash-flow savings from reduced inventory across the board. Based on this information, the xIO solution then generates reports that recommend the suggested changes to future orders and calculates the expected savings both in inventory carrying costs and year-over-year cash outlays for MRO inventory.

But it doesn’t stop there. For each individual item it creates a detailed inventory report that shows the trend over the last 36 months, the projected trend, the expected savings from the initial change to the order frequency, and the expected MRO inventory savings over time. All of the data that go into the summary reports and report by inventory category (defined by inventory velocity) can be drilled into and all of the data (and reports) can be exported to Excel (if desired). And once the suggested changes are accepted, the Xtivity solution can push the new order points, order quantities, and lead times back into your inventory management solution which will take over the ordering, tracking, and classic inventory management functions.

Xtivity, which is well known in the reliability, maintenance improvement, and big MRO space, if not in the broader supply chain management space as a whole, has become so good in its niche that they are at the point where their average client sees a ROI in 90 days or less and 10x ROI over time. Plus, 99.99% of clients can use their solution out of the box. They support so many inventory systems and data formats (in addition to being SAP and Maximo certified) that they only had to do a custom data conversion project for 2 out of the last 1,000 global companies (of a solution that supports, and supports users in, 6 languages) that have tried their platform.

When Xtivity says xIO is a true SaaS solution with no hardware, software, or integration requirements that plugs the MRO optimization hole with virtually no effort (beyond an inventory manager reviewing the order point, order frequency, and lead time recommendations and approving them for push-back into the inventory management system), Xtivity means it. The entire application has been streamlined to not only optimize MRO inventory management and free up as much cash as possible without increasing operational risk, but to minimize the amount of effort required to get results. This is important because you generally don’t generate business value by wasting time on software support, you generate value by implementing and maintaining better (MRO) inventory management policies. And the Xtivity solution allows you to focus on operations, not software, and thus get a quick return. It fills its niche very well. So if you are looking to improve your MRO inventory management, and potentially free up Millions of dollars in cash-flow, check out the Xtivity xIO solution, it’s easy to try and very easy to use.  (For more information on Xtivity, they can be contacted at optimize@xtivity.com.)

Is MRO Inventory Bogging You Down? Maybe You Need a Bit of Xtivity? Part I

Inventory optimization is tough, but maintenance, repair, and operations inventory management is even tougher because the parts just sit there until they are needed — and sometimes, either due to proper maintenance or just good luck, the critical part you are stockpiling for your production line sits on the shelf three times longer than expected while other times the critical part has to be replaced twice as often as the vendor who sold you the machine told you it would have to be.

The last thing you want to do is get the stock levels wrong because inventory is expensive. In addition to the capital that is tied up in the inventory, there are the facility storage costs (which include rent, overhead expenses for services like security, and property taxes) and the possession costs that include, but are not limited to, clerical costs (to track the inventory), insurance (to insure the inventory as a whole), theft (as the insurance policy will have a deductible and a maximum claim), taxes (when the organization takes possession), deterioration (as some inventory will get damaged or spoil), depreciation (as most components decrease in value over time), and obsolescence (if the inventory cannot be used in time). Having inventory sit idle is very costly.

To make matters worse, many of these parts are very expensive and often have no residual value if unused. Whereas unpopular consumer packaged goods can often be sold at fire-sale prices which will allow you to recover some of their cost, this is not always so with MRO. This is because the parts are typically only useable within a particular machine on your production line and by the time you shut it down, chances are that the supplier is no longer selling the machine and most of the suppliers’ other customers are no longer using the machine as well. In addition, many MRO parts and supplies, especially in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and high-tech industries, have specific storage requirements (cool, dry, etc.) and this makes the storage cost even pricier than for regular (consumer) goods.

With typical inventory carrying cost eating up approximately 25% to 40% of a company’s annual inventory investment, the last thing you want is too much inventory, especially since certain MRO categories with special storage requirements and a high risk of obsolescence can have amortized inventory carrying costs that are close to the total value of the inventory! Unless you like having millions tied up in inventory, you need to make sure that you optimize your MRO inventory to the best of your ability. If you can’t do that, don’t rely on creativity — that won’t be enough because just one wrong JIT (Just in Time) decision can bring your entire production line down for days and cost you Millions of dollars. If you don’t have a suitable platform and the expertise in house, don’t rely on creativity. Apply a little Xtivity instead.