Are You Imprisoned by Your Information Technology?

The responsive side of enterprise resource planning software

When most fabricators hear that their software vendor wants to offer them a “customizable” solution, they start gripping their wallets tightly.

This is completely justified. In far too many instances, “customizable” has meant weeks or months of waiting (and paying) for their software vendor’s coders to tailor the system to fit the way they want to work. Each new shortfall in the base system means another expensive round of modifications, upgrades, implementation, and training.

Another reason the word customization carries a negative connotation in the fabricator’s world is that it rings hollow when the customization offered is simply cosmetic. This type of customization allows users to personalize display fields or reports, but it doesn’t really address the true variables on the ground in terms of your unique business and work flow. It doesn’t help the fabrication team deliver better products, on time and at higher profits.

No Standard Fabrication Business

Many fabricators who have adopted out-of-the-box enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology to help them run their business end to end have found that a lot of the standard functionality, such as production, project management, and financials, suits them just fine. But because every fabricator relies on tailored processes in their operations and work flow, that small percentage of functionality that doesn’t exist “out of the box” can turn out to be costly. Shop teams can devise painful workarounds to make up for information gaps that the software vendor couldn’t anticipate. This adds time to the PO-to-part-delivery cycle, which puts the fabricator at a disadvantage when being compared to potential competitors.

Take the estimation process, for example. How a fabricator classifies and organizes parts can vary greatly from business to business. A lead estimator may need some leeway here, and if the system is too rigid, the estimating team can end up confused and waste time and money trying to concoct out-of-system workarounds. Now job information is floating around outside of the system, which leads to lost efficiency. More specifically, the production floor personnel do not have all the information they need on a single screen and have to refer to e-mails or track people down to ask questions. Chances for input errors also increase because people are double-entering job data.

In another example, custom job orders can prove to be a real challenge if the manufacturing ERP software can’t adapt to the challenge. An aircraft manufacturer recently had to address this scenario when a customer approached it about completing a design for nonstandard seats. The manufacturer had to employ manual fixes that included scanning paper orders and sending them back into the systems in PDF form—a headache for all involved.

Little changes can have a big impact, which is why a company that has an agile software system that can be adapted to account for customer demands has a means to keep more of those customers happy.

Software That Reflects Realistic Production

Recent advances in cloud technology—which allows users to access and store information on remote servers via the Internet instead of relying on local computing power—empower custom manufacturers and fabricators to reflect the way they actually work. Production teams are more efficient and profitable as they adapt software tools to respond to their unique operational flows.

Most systems can be customized to do exactly what the fabricator wants, but at what price and how long will it take to deliver the customization? Having a cloud system eliminates the hardware that lives at the manufacturing site. It’s in the cloud, which means that consultants and techs don’t have to travel to the headquarters every time a company wants to upgrade something. This sets the stage for the benefits of specific configurations rather than just cosmetic configurations.

This configurability allows the fabricator to drive more efficient operations and make better highlevel decisions with a tool that can work the way the manufacturer wants it to work—not the way the programmer assumes the enterprise should operate. The manufacturer is able to extend the application to meet new requirements and processes, not just change the presentation of existing functions. It means not being on the hook for writing or maintaining software code whenever the software is expected to adapt to changing circumstances.

But most important of all, the manufacturer achieves efficiency and customer service gains resulting from people being able to perform their work better—not distracting themselves and creating production lags and errors by trying to wrestle with a rigid software program. Being able to affordably adapt ERP software makes a business more agile, better able to respond to changing customer needs and competitive threats in its niche. And, of course, because a cloud-based software approach such as this doesn’t require a ton of coding work or on-site visits, the manufacturer enjoys a reduced cost of ownership (see “RAD Approach to Configuration” sidebar).

Achieving the vision of truly configurable cloud ERP has been difficult because legacy software systems lacked this functional flexibility. Fortunately, this is now changing, and the future looks bright for the convergence of configurable ERP technology and fabricators’ need to drive greater levels of effectiveness and competitive advantage.

www.keyedin.com