The requirements of the engineer-to-order (ETO) environment create special challenges for capital equipment manufacturers. Traditional material requirements planning (MRP) techniques don’t account for these manufacturers’ needs. Before you invest in manufacturing software, you should carefully consider 10 questions to ensure that software vendors are focused on your business and can deliver the solution you need.
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The printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing market has changed, as production shifts from Europe and North America to countries in Asia. As markets migrate to these low-cost suppliers, how can a PCB manufacturer in Europe or North America compete? The best opportunities lie in high value-added products and services that can’t be easily duplicated. Learn more about taking the lead with new technologies and processes.
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Kanban—the Japanese term for physical or visual signs that trigger replenishment, which can be a useful part of lean manufacturing—is not a good fit in some situations. Alternatives to kanban can also eliminate waste in lean production by addressing inventory, materials, and replenishment process needs. Learn more on how you can find alternatives to kanban to make your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system “leaner.”
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Haynes Wire Company produces wire for structural and welding applications as well as medical. The company’s existing homegrown system was increasingly unable to manage and provide access to the information needed to operate the growing business, such as per-order costs. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system helped by enhancing knowledge of costs, with increased control, visibility, and profitability.
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From its two locations, All Flex serves industrial, medical, and other customers with printed circuits. Five years ago, All Flex kept its records in multiple, inconsistently updated spreadsheets—leading to parts shortages and production delays. With an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system designed for the printed circuit industry, All Flex increased sales and reduced delays to less than 1 percent. Find out how.
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B&K Corporation engineers and manufactures test and assembly systems for automotive and other components. But B&K didn’t have the infrastructure and systems support for effective engineering controls and documentation—manual and paper-based processes meant data was often three weeks old. Find out how B&K decreased costs and improved customer service with a new automated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Adkev is a custom molder of thermoplastic injection components. In order to serve its automotive customers, Adkev must meet strict requirements, including processing electronic orders effectively and maintaining control of inventory and production schedules for on-time delivery. Find out why the company’s old enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution couldn’t support these requirements, and how the new system can.
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Anderson Power Products manufactures power connectors for telecommunications and other industries. The company, needing to consolidate data for its standard and customized products across five global locations, found an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that offers one reliable point of entry. Discover how the ERP solution helped improve shipping, customer relationships, financial reporting time, and more.
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When Johnstown Wire Technologies left its parent company, it had to quickly establish its own IT resources, as the legacy system inhibited growth. The new system would have to be integrated, responsive, and include functionality for quality, lot tracing, scheduling, and cost management. Learn about the return on investment (ROI) the company found after it implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Toronto, Canada-based printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer Coretec expanded from one location to three. But its custom systems weren’t well integrated and were difficult to maintain. The company needed an integrated system to facilitate its goals for order volume and customer service and growth. Find out how an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution helped the company increase capacity and improve delivery times.
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A few years ago, the top customer complaint for plastics provider Rowmark was shipping errors. For several reasons, customers weren’t receiving what they ordered. Problems were traced back to handwritten inventory labels, and manual counting and checking of orders. Learn how the company upgraded the system it already had by adding bar code labels and scanning, as well as other electronic data interchange (EDI) techniques.
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A premium aluminum boat builder struggled to fit into a standard enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. But the company found it difficult to schedule and track engineer-to-order (ETO) jobs, and it was wasting a lot of time duplicating efforts. Also, it needed effective communication between computer-aided design (CAD) and ERP systems. Read about the solution that helped the company streamline its processes.
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A fast-growing robotics product manufacturer needed to track an extremely large inventory of individual products. A daily expanding product line presented even greater hurdles for inventory management, and meeting on-time delivery goals. The company’s old enterprise resource planning (ERP) system wasn’t keeping up, so the company moved to a system that allows more options for product customization and more. Learn how.
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Make-to-order company Advanced Scientifics produces medical devices, including bag systems, tubing assemblies, and molded components. Manual paper-based systems severely hampered the company’s growth potential: it couldn’t effectively control production consistency, as its inventory control and job orders weren’t scalable. Learn how annual revenue by went up 20 percent with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
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Nebraska, US-based Smeal grew to over 315 employees at two sites manufacturing 15 kinds of pumps, 12 types of aerial ladders, and four kinds of aerial platforms—all with over 4,400 custom options each. To increase efficiency and improve inventory tracking, the company installed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that integrated its old manual paper-based systems. Learn more about how the company benefited.
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IT organizations today are faced with the constant pressure of reducing costs at the service desk, while at the same time ensuring optimal customer service. To accelerate their IT infrastructure library (ITIL) initiatives, many are implementing service resolution management (SRM) systems. With the addition of SRM, these organizations can address the core issues required to operate an efficient and strategic service desk.
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As products become more complex and customer expectations continue to rise, service and support become increasingly difficult. So how can service and support managers transcend these problems and use each customer interaction to build customer loyalty and drive service leveraged revenue? By empowering customers with Web 2.0 technology and enabling users to manage their own experiences. Find out how.
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Whether you’re a manufacturer, vendor, or customer service company, the increasing pressure to make sales and decrease service costs affects you. The key to its success is to look at your customer experiences as repeatable life cycles. Instead of viewing sales and service as independent challenges—solved by using disconnected software packages—an integrated solution that accelerates the total life cycle may be the answer.
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Knowledge management (KM) can mean different things to an organization depending upon the nature of the initiative. KM is not a technology or set of methodologies, but a practice or discipline that involves people, processes, and technology. If implemented correctly, a KM initiative can improve the productivity and efficiency of an entire organization. With these ten basic principles, your organization can learn how.
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Today’s support organizations often face the challenge of providing efficient and effective customer service. Without the right tools, it can become an uphill battle. To gain true scale and effectiveness in service and support, many organizations are now turning to knowledge management initiatives like knowledge-centered support (KCS)—a business process that directly addresses the root causes of support inefficiencies.
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Since 1985, TrailTech Inc. has provided the agriculture, construction, and transportation industries with state-of-the-art trailer equipment. However, inaccurate bills of materials (BOMs) were causing bottlenecks, missed delivery dates, and substandard productivity. After TrailTech implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that created real-time BOMs and eliminated bottlenecks, customer complaints of delinquent deliveries reduced dramatically, improving stress levels throughout the plant.
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Qualitel couldn’t keep up with the growing demand for its electronics. With revenues increasing 30 to 40 percent per year, its order entry and accounting systems were rapidly becoming obsolete. Qualitel needed a solution—and fast. Just one year later, after selecting and implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Qualitel’s revenue exploded 471 percent to $12.89 million (USD).
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.NET technology is a wake-up call, and some people are sleeping through it! Remaining competitive means mission-critical software systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, must be designed from the ground up for connectivity and integration. But software developers don’t advertise their shortcomings, and some ERP vendors—and by association, their customers—are being left behind.
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Customer-facing processes are challenging to manage because they are always changing. Conventional workflow automation and stand-alone business process management (BPM) technologies lack many critical components found in customer relationship management (CRM). However, converging BPM and CRM provides the responsiveness, cost-effectiveness, and manageability to achieve optimal results. The converged approach helps align priorities enterprise-wide, reduce risks, and unblock revenue growth potential.
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When businesses commit to implementing customer relationship management (CRM), they commit to realigning their entire organizations around the customer. More specifically, they commit to collecting the right data—and using it the right way at the right time. But if you’re the manager championing CRM in your organization, how do you create the CRM buzz and obtain executive buy-in?
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Customer process management (CPM)—the convergence of customer relationship management (CRM) and business process management (BPM)—can deliver significant gains in efficiency and standardization for insurance companies. Whether it’s providing real-time quotations for insurance policies, identifying cross-selling and renewal opportunities, or managing claims, CPM extends across the enterprise to ensure that each customer interaction becomes an opportunity for service excellence.
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As competition in the financial sector increases, many financial services providers are seeking ways to improve customer service and profitability through process efficiency. By developing rich integration between customer data and allowing that data to be managed by the business users, customer process management (CPM) enables financial services organizations to adapt to changing market demands and maximize their competitive edge.
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Choosing the right customer resource management (CRM) application involves looking at its ability to solve many business challenges—both expected and unexpected. Analyzing CRM applications for their problem-solving acumen can help your business successfully select a platform that improves the way you do business, drives profits, and reduces risk, while minimizing IT resource requirements.
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Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and receiving quality customer service is a major factor in their purchasing decisions. There are six key elements that can help distinguish your organization’s product or service from your competitors. By applying these key elements, you can unlock the lifetime value of your customers and build an outstanding referral platform for future growth.
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This case study covers why a sporting goods and apparel manufacturer's selection team chose to purchase and implement the Made2Manage® Enterprise Business System from Made2Manage Systems.
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In 1999, Qualitel Corporation, an electronics manufacturer, earned $2.85 million (USD) in revenue. Just one year later, after implementing a new business model and the Intuitive enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Qualitel's revenue exploded 471 percent to $12.89 million (USD). By modernizing its operations, Qualitel decreased lead times and increased on-time delivery from 30 to 90 percent.
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