ERP for manufacturing: Now more than ever

Once business leaders have identified the challenges they face and the outcomes they want to achieve, they’ll need to look at some of the specific functionalities of cloud ERP to determine how those features can help them meet their goals.

• Business intelligence: An in-memory database with a device-friendly dashboard lets ERP users easily customize reports and aggregate disparate data sets to deliver fast, accurate intel. This lets C-suite stakeholders compile all the information they need make fast, confident decisions without having to hunt through a lot of data, scattered across departments, or wait ages for reports. 
• Financial management: Whether in the boardroom or on the factory floor, business leaders need to have a close eye on the bottom line. Access to accurate, real-time financial data and reports is essential. Manufacturers using cloud ERP benefit from faster financial close, more accurate job costing, and the ability to amalgamate finances and expenses all in one place, in a globally consistent format.
• Material requirements planning (MRP) and production: An old adage says that inventory is just money sitting around in another form. For centuries, manufacturers have struggled to have enough (but not too much) raw material and inventory on hand. For as long as this has been a problem, its solution has involved curating information from a lot of different yet relevant sources. With cloud ERP functionality, managers can inform their operations with live data from internal departments – as well as external data from supplier networks, customers and even news and weather reports. Live MRP scheduling features help businesses ensure both supply and rapid sourcing during volatile times – allowing for significantly faster reaction to shifts and trends, and the ability to remain connected to business and supplier networks in real time. 
• Simplified and leaner production and assembly: The drive for leaner manufacturing is leading companies to simplify production and assembly processes. Cloud ERP systems help to unify assembly plans – incorporating MRP, production and capacity planning, bills of material and routing. Predictive analytics also contribute to this process by informing robotics and robotic process automation (RPA), and mapping machine models and factory floor layout. When production and material flow is automated from end to end, the most efficient manufacturing methods can be put into play such as lean control, continuous improvement, and just-in-time replenishment.
• Streamlined design and engineering: Manufacturing doesn’t start on the assembly line, or even with the raw materials – it starts with ideas and inspiration. Designers and engineers bring new products to life, and market researchers and data analysts help to make sure those products are as tightly aligned as possible to their customers’ hopes and wishes. In the past, it took a long time for  this information to get shared and acted upon, and much of it got eroded and lost like a whispered word in a game of telephone. But today, cloud ERP lets customers, designers, R&D, and production teams collaborate in real time. It also speeds up the process by helping to centralize and manage smooth handovers of engineering documents, bills of material, design changes, and other relevant global documentation and specs.
• Tight quality management: The best quality management (QM) processes are data-driven and objective. The ability to run closed-loop QM processes – from planning to operations – in an ERP helps business minimize risk and more confidently roll out new products and services. What’s more, AI-driven technologies can help managers run customized what-if simulations or build digital twins with which to test any eventual situation. This means that virtual machines and processes can be pushed to their absolute limits, without any cost or risk to valuable physical equipment. This QA and testing feedback can then be broken down by specialist area and shared with the relevant teams across the business to support continuous improvement and risk mitigation.
• Accurate project planning: Exploring new projects and expansion opportunities shouldn’t have to involve any more risk or speculation than absolutely necessary. Integrating various data sets from across the operation onto a single shared ERP platform helps planners optimize and automate production projects. And when machine learning capabilities are put into the mix, it means that the ERP system will learn over time from similar project plans, getting smarter and more accurate as it goes. With this kind of increased central visibility and end-to-end data capture, planners can automate ‘true actual’ costings for highly engineered products and projects. This not only adds value and cuts cost across the final outcome, but it also gives your business negotiators more confidence to narrow margins and quote more competitively with less fear and risk.
• Product configuration: It’s one thing to be responsive to customer feedback and reviews but what if you could allow your customers to personalize products at a click? Today, customer-facing, web-based product configurators supported by cloud ERP are allowing customers to bring their ideas to life. Moreover, these tools are rules-based and structured. This means that only realistic, feasible, and relevant customizations can get made. It also means that those customizations are digitally communicated to designers and manufacturers in ways that are globally consistent and built to work with existing operational processes.
• Future-proofing and scalability: Newspapers, phone booths, wristwatches. Every day, something old becomes obsolete and new objects and technologies begin to trend. Where once the cycle of obsolescence may have taken decades, it now seems to take just months, weeks, even days. For manufacturers, this not only means they have to keep their ears to the ground, but that they have to be able to re-jig and pivot their existing operations rapidly and frequently. The reconfigurations can have enormous impact across every department of a business. But with cloud ERP solutions with AI and machine learning capabilities, operational changes can be identified and automated across the organization. Plus, the best in-memory databases are virtually infinitely scalable, to support not only rapid change but also rapid growth and expansion.