Does demand planning for manufacturing materials feel like you're using a crystal ball rather than actual data? When you underestimate or overestimate demand due to inaccurate sales projections, it creates unnecessary financial burdens. Failing to deliver products in a timely manner often creates a costly remedy and an unsatisfying experience. Over-purchasing raw materials and the associated storage costs can also cause a loss in profits. To combat these challenges, here are four must-have ERP features to help you achieve financial gains with automation in manufacturing.
Selecting an ERP manufacturing management and accounting
system to run your business is a decision that will affect your
company for many years. Many products offer the same or similar
features and it can be confusing to sort out what’s important and
what’s not. Hopefully, this document will help!
The ability to predict and manage the balance between production, inventory availability and sales orders can contribute to your success in the manufacturing market today. Acumatica’s MRP solutions provide an integrated ERP to help your company accurately estimate purchasing for raw materials used in manufacturing.
Integrating your MRP with your ERP enables your company to oversee management from a real-time dashboard, automating your entire manufacturing process with seamless, multi-layer, end-to-end control of your production and your financials. It’s easy to maintain optimal inventory levels from pre- to post-production, including scheduling multi-layer levels of tasks to help deliver a smooth shipping experience to customers.
Your Master Production Schedule (MPS) is driven by real-time data from MRP ERP systems, evaluating the demand for necessary raw materials for production. MRP analyzes your customer data to determine the demand for specific products, then drills down into specifying what raw materials and components will be necessary to fulfill real-time and estimated products.
Consider your MPS as a data-driven dynamic production order that acts as a supply plan for your production demand requirements.
After evaluating your supply status of raw goods and components, materials are distributed into the exact areas as needed. The MPS creates a multi-layer inventory plan based on the needs of manufacturing requirements and a work-in-progress inventory of internally manufactured components. It provides you with a comprehensive real-time view of a project as it stands across all delivery levels. Acumatica is the best ERP for distributors.
This MPS puts the control in your hands to expedite, defer, or cancel supply orders by creating a list of recommended actions based on historical ordering data and trending incoming sales forecasts. Time and labour requirements are calculated to complete manufacturing based on a timeline created to maximize production ease.
Your MRP works to identify anomalies in data and performance metrics where actual outcomes deviate significantly from expectations, which could indicate something wrong in your project plan or organization. The MRP gives you a view of your complete material plan through MRP screens that show all activity, orders, requirements, balances, and recommendations for an inventory item. From this data, forecasts are developed to drive the MPS from sales history and/or manual entry.
Acumatica ERP enables your managers to monitor material plans, material shortage reports, and production from a real-time platform with confidence. By defining planning buckets to consolidate demand into single purchase orders, planned production periods can be streamlined across system-wide ordering for longer-term planning.
Your MRP automatically alerts your managers of any production delays and even suggests contingency plans to meet production build deadlines. Greater data management improves your projected material requirements planning by defining finish, move, and queue times for operations that require multi-stage production before moving to upstream operations (such as outsourced manufacturing services), and other expected non-production times.
Identification of potential delays is prevented by improving the management of your physical inventory between warehouses or sites, allowing you the power to identify late orders and show available inventory Multi-layer planning data of external purchases and internal manufacturing rolls up to finished goods, reducing inventory, improving customer service, and avoiding shortages and stock-out scenarios that result in costly orders. MRP reporting can help you understand the balance of supply and demand for planned inbound and outbound transfer orders across warehouse locations.
The assurance an MRP provides your company by developing a production plan for your finished product by cataloging raw material needs and inventory requirements for manufacturing components gives confidence that materials and products will be ready for use when needed. Adding Acumatica’s Material Requirements Planning automation will generate greater opportunities to streamline your processes and create real-time manufacturing and purchasing plans for optimal inventory availability tied to forecasts and actual customer demands.
Aqurus believes in a custom approach to integrating MRP into your business. By providing better and targeted communications and AI-driven technologies to manage new customer care expectations, Acumatica’s applications can provide improved organization and efficiency to powerfully grow your business.
At Aqurus, we know how valuable Acumatica ERP software is for businesses – especially those in Manufacturing, Distribution, eCommerce, and the retail industry. If you’re interested in how Acumatica’s Cloud ERP Software can boost your business, the Aqurus team is passionate about smooth implementation and ongoing support.
The team at Aqurus can help you too. Reach out today to discover how their expertise can help you create efficiencies and cost savings. Call (403) 768-0322 or email today!