C.W. Thomas, Philadelphia-based manufacturer of vacuum/pressure formed products, and IQMS, vendor of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) software, announced today that they have signed an agreement to implement several IQMS solutions: ERP software EnterpriseIQ and MES offerings that include, among other things, the shop floor control solution ShopData and production monitoring module RealTime.

This packaged solution from a recognized manufacturing software vendor is supposed to replace an archaic DOS-based homegrown system combined with Excel spreadsheets. The existing tool requires many duplicate manual efforts to sustain production and is obviously not fully capable of supporting the business. Read the rest of this entry »

After a very good 2012, IQMS, a manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and manufacturing execution systems (MES) developer with an ongoing and proactive commitment to its product and relationships, continues 2013 with new customer wins—most recently, Airlite Plastics Co. has selected IQMS.

Airlite Plastics’ legacy software was a combination of commercial and custom-built applications that were creating numerous challenges. Difficulties supporting custom-built applications and integrating many different versions of the software encouraged Airlite Plastics to seek out a new ERP system. According to the press release, Airlite reviewed 10 to 12 ERP packages, but it would seem that many of them were not robust enough to make the final cut. Read the rest of this entry »

British American Tobacco (BAT) has a 10-year working relationship with Apriso, during which time the flexibility, scope of capabilities, and depth of Apriso’s solutions have been realized first hand at six international manufacturing sites. BAT has elected to standardize its operations on Apriso FlexNet, a manufacturing execution system (MES) software solution. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s only last year that Epicor and Activant were merged, and now there’s more big news from the company. Today Epicor announced its acquisition of Solarsoft Business Systems, a developer of ERP and manufacturing execution system (MES) software for small and medium businesses. Solarsoft’s two major ERP products, iVP and Tropos, cater to discrete and mixed-mode manufacturers of that market segment. While iVP is mainly focused on discrete-type customers with a strong need for electronic data interchange (EDI) functionality and offers relatively easy transformation for legacy IBM-based systems, Tropos is more process manufacturing–oriented and includes many features that allow customers to comply with US FDA requirements. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series started with a discussion of the fact that the ability to sense demand and become a demand-driven (responsive) business is more than just the catch phrase du jour: it has become a recipe for survival. For the past few decades, the providers of a multiplicity of by-and-large integrated manufacturing software solutions have been offering help for embattled manufacturers. From fully integrated business management systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) down to more focused modular plant-level solutions, including Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) systems, manufacturers have been perplexed by how to best combine and deploy these options and islands of information.

My posting concluded that ERP systems are good for long-term planning and transactional accounting, but not necessarily appropriate for scheduling and execution on the shop floor. Only those companies that have infinite (or lots to spare) capacity, low product mix, high customer tolerance for long order lead times, and low inventory holding costs could get by using ERP for scheduling.

In other words, not many manufacturers can be fully satisfied by ERP. The next logical question was whether Lean Manufacturing practices could alleviate the abovementioned ERP shortfalls. Part 2 then acknowledged that lean ERP capabilities are well suited for producing parts with level demand (so-called “runners” in Preactor’s apt lingo) but not necessarily for parts with variable demands and make-to-order (MTO) traits (so-called “repeaters” and “strangers”).

This realization has created a coming-of-age environment for APS systems, whose first generation of products a decade ago has had their share of mixed results. The final part of this series will analyze how APS, as a manufacturing glue of sorts, relates to ERP, lean manufacturing, and MES. Is there a value proposition for integrating all these disparate systems? 

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series started with the fact that the ability to sense demand and become a demand-driven (responsive) business is more than just the catch phrase du jour: it has become a recipe for survival. Every sensible enterprise is on a quest to deliver on time and as quickly as necessary, with minimum inventory (and working capital), and the highest necessary utilization.

For a few decades, the providers of a multiplicity of by and large integrated manufacturing software solutions have been offering help for embattled manufacturers. From fully integrated business management systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) down to more focused modular plant-level solutions including Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) systems, manufacturers have been perplexed with how best to combine and deploy these options and islands of information.

The article concluded that ERP systems are good for planning and transactional accounting purposes, but not necessarily appropriate for scheduling and execution on the shop floor. Only those companies that have infinite (or lots of spare) capacity, low product mix, their customers’ tolerance for long order lead times, and low inventory holding costs could get by using ERP for scheduling.

In other words, not many manufacturers can be fully satisfied by ERP. The next logical question is whether Lean Manufacturing practices can alleviate the abovementioned ERP shortfalls. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Especially in today’s globally competitive and recessionary environment it is imperative that companies further eliminate waste, become leaner, and become more agile to respond to customer’s demand. The ability to sense demand and become a demand-driven (responsive) business is more than just the catch-phrase du jour: it has become a recipe for survival. Everyone is on a quest to deliver on time and as quickly as necessary, with minimum inventory (and working capital), and highest necessary utilization. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series expanded on some of TEC’s earlier articles about companies’ need for better links between the plant (”blue collar trenches”) and the enterprise (”white collar ivory tower”). It also pointed out the difficulties in achieving this idea. An obvious solution would be a tightly integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) package that would help manufacturers close the gap between the shop floor and the offices by gaining visibility into manufacturing operations, achieving shop floor control, managing product/process traceability, genealogy, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

Those that follow manufacturing-oriented enterprise applications have likely noticed for some time an uptick of conversations about the need to better integrate high-speed manufacturing operations (the real-time world of the plant) with the planning and engineering departments (the transactional and design world of enterprise systems). The nirvana (or utopia) hoped for thus far has been to provide a single point of operation and control for manufacturers to: Plan, Define, Control, Execute, and Analyze Production.

Why do we need integrated manufacturing operations, or manufacturing execution systems (MES) linked to transactional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, likely via some plant-level integration hub and visualization & intelligence layer? Read the rest of this entry »