Reduce Waste with Epicor ERP
‘Tis the season to cut down on waste. Accumulating waste can totally overwhelm your business and make you a Grinch at office holiday parties. But does your organization know what to do to attack extraneous spending and other sinkholes? The best method is to implement an ERP solution to uphold lean manufacturing practices, reduce waste and save money. Check out some of these common areas of manufacturing waste, and learn how ERP can help you combat all of them.
Overproduction
Overproduction is one of the most common areas of business waste, yet it remains a tough one to tackle because it can come from all facets of your company and manifest in many different forms. Perhaps it’s coming from poor demand planning, sales people ineffectively closing late-stage deals or overworked machinery slowing down your production lines. Fortunately, ERP includes the lean manufacturing functionality to combat sources of overproduction.
ERP enables Kanban manufacturing, which works to ruthlessly cut back on waste at every stage of your supply chain. Epicor, a leading ERP vendor, includes user-defined rules that can flag Kanban control at the part, warehouse or individual bin or cell location level. A variety of Kanban flows are made possible with Epicor, providing real-time manufacturing, stock replenishment and purchasing. Kanban manufacturing also provides visibility of future demand, empowering your company to use data-directed decision making to cut down on overproduction.
Poor Inventory Management
Poor inventory control will usually be one of the natural runoffs from overproduction, but excess production isn’t the only way a business can mismanage stock. Shipping errors can also take a toll on your inventory management. A strong ERP inventory management module will ensure smooth shipping and processing.
When orders are made, the ERP inventory management system will process them and begin staging deliveries out of your facility, without requiring human intervention. Orders make their way through a carefully constructed scanning system where team members can track products and shipments from request to fulfillment. Accurate shipment both in and out of your facility drastically improves your inventory management strategy and saves time and money.
Additionally, your ERP system offers fine-tuned forecasting that enables proper inventory management throughout the year. By leveraging your ERP software for calculated and weighted order points, you can reduce seasonal spikes as well as stock outs and overstocks, thereby ensuring that your inventory isn’t gathering dust in a warehouse.
Departmental Silos
Departmental silos deter future business growth by enabling mistakes and waste. Too often, we come across businesses that use disjointed software systems in their front and back offices. When different platforms don’t communicate, employees find themselves entering the same data into multiple systems or spending time going on a wild goose chase to find a crucial piece of data. Double entry not only wastes employees’ valuable time, but also makes it easier for faulty data and human error to creep into your system.
If you’re running multiple enterprise software systems, it’s best to integrate them to proactively avoid waste. Luckily, Datix makes this process easy with Unity, our flagship product that connects ERP with CRM, eCommerce or Marketing Automation software. With integrated software, your front and back offices will communicate better than ever. By fostering collaboration, your integrated software helps your organization attract leads, fulfill business goals and elevate efficiency.
Manufacturing Bottlenecks
Bottlenecks on your shop floor, no matter how large or small they may be, compound over time to create a significant source of waste. Perhaps you don’t have enough workers scheduled for a certain line, or you have too much raw material coming into the facility to be manufactured on time. Maybe you have production lines waiting for an order to be processed from your CRM into your ERP (especially if they haven’t been integrated). Either way, if your departments, software and production lines aren’t working together, these missteps in communication will manifest themselves as manufacturing floor miscues: understaffing, not enough boxes for shipping, etc.
Improving production planning is a surefire solution for avoiding costly bottlenecks, and Epicor’s material requirements planning (MRP) module makes production planning easy. Simply enter the BOM required for a product, and your ERP system does the rest of the work, ordering only the products you need from suppliers when you ask for them. Epicor ensures the right machinery and raw material are in place before the production line starts up.
Wrap Up
If offices aren’t communicating, your software is outdated or you are just following the same business practices as 20 years ago, you’re going to accumulate waste at every single stage of your business. Your ERP software can become a critical tool in fighting back against these sources of business waste. Deploying and integrating a powerful suite of enterprise software consolidates your manufacturing data and business processes into one single source of truth, rooting out waste and eradicating unnecessary spending on your shop floor.
Is money wasted on manufacturing processes killing your holiday spirit? Do you already have ERP and CRM software but haven’t found a way to effectively integrate them? Get in touch with the software experts at Datix today! As an Epicor Gold Partner with over 20 years of experience in enterprise software, Datix knows how to introduce ERP onto your shop floor seamlessly.
Our premier consultants can help you make 2020 a year your business remembers. Contact Datix today to find out why Epicor ERP is the gift that keeps on giving!
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