American manufacturers need to stay current if they wish to remain successful. Positioning yourself for growth means looking to the future and gaining efficiencies through new technologies. That’s why this question may be the most important one for your business— are you a future-ready manufacturer?
Before you can adequately answer that question, you and the members of your organization need to know the answers to these three questions
Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, or renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.
Applied Composites Engineering (ACE) is a premier supplier of aviation and aerospace products and services. This includes creating products from concept to finish for the international commercial, corporate, and military aircraft industries.
Success Highlights
Challenges
Tie together operations end-to-end and ensure all manufacturing processes, products, and services meet stringent government and industry regulations
Solution
Epicor® ERP
Benefits
Visibility to make on-the-fly changes based on customer requirements
Review details, communicate changes, and make informed decisions in minutes
Create automated procedures ensuring all processes meet certification standards
Increased profitability by tracking the shelf life of materials and reducing the amount of inventory kept on hand
Better identify the time and activity spent on each operation
Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.
CV Technology manufactures solutions used to reduce the explosion and fire hazards associated with the handling of process powders and dry bulk materials. Launched in 1994, the company is now a worldwide market leader and vendor of choice for numerous Fortune 500 companies.
In recent years, CV Technology sales have doubled, necessitating the move to a new 28,000 sq. ft. facility in Jupiter, Florida. This move was needed to fulfill the monthly engineering and manufacture of hundreds of explosion mitigation devices—ranging from vents and isolation valves to flameless vents and chemical suppression equipment.
Success Highlights
Challenges
Tracking the status of components and assembly of products through the manufacturing cycle
Reducing production delays
Improving assembly times
Solution
Epicor ERP®
Benefits
Doubled revenues since the system’s launch
Increased marketplace competitiveness and overall profitability
Reduced manufacturing costs and related labor and overhead
Simplified the generation of everything from packing slips to invoices
Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.
In the last few years, automation has scaled with technological innovation exceptionally well. Manufacturing industries and consumers both are reaping the benefits every day. Hardware, like industrial robots, and enterprise software, like NetSuite and Epicor ERP, are working together more efficiently than ever before to refine processes for manufacturers and deliver high-quality products to consumers. However, while production process efficiencies are making great strides, profitability control doesn’t receive the attention it should be getting. Expenditures and inefficient resource use are two of the most impactful factors for a business to consider.
Manufacturing Profitability Control
According to Federal Reserve data, Manufacturing in the US has risen for the second consecutive month. Factory production of machinery, vehicles, computers, and electronics all signaled a healthy ecosystem going into the second half of 2018. Some industrial production highlights include an increase in factory output of 0.3% and a total industrial production increase of 0.1%. Factory production was 2.8% higher than the same time last year, as well.
Production has increased because of investment, innovation, and the incorporation of new technologies into operations. While modern tools have been leveraged to improve manufacturing productivity, maintenance practices, safety, and worker wellness are feeling the pressure that comes with the demand for increased throughput. Efforts to improve real-time monitoring, control, and maintenance improve safety and equipment reliability. This helps to take a lot off the plate of factory technicians and operators who bear the stress of stakeholders’ demands.
While automation, equipment, and personnel inch closer to harmony every day, efforts in profitability control can be expanded significantly.
Manufacturing Change Management
Dr. Peter Martin, Vice President and Edison fellow at Schneider Electric, uses the relationship between manufacturers and utility providers as an apt example to illustrate the speed at which change has been adopted directly into operations but forgotten in other areas of the manufacturing process. It is in these areas and relationships that further profitability can be explored.
“Some 20 years ago, you’d negotiate an agreement with your electrical utility supplier to fix the price for, say, a year in advance. Today, with open power grids, the price might change every five to twenty minutes. The cost of other inputs such as natural gas and raw materials can vary just as quickly,” he states. “This variation is equally evident at the consumer end. Thanks to Google and Amazon, the price of a product can change between morning and evening.”
Following a thorough round of interviews with more than 1,000 executives, Dr. Martin and his team agree the pain is being felt across the manufacturing landscape and changes can be made to combat the problem, stating, “We realized that by using sensors in a plant we could model real-time accounting at each cost and value point in the process, and these measurements would allow us to provide profitability control, pulled together with efficiency, safety, and reliability.”
Manufacturing Visibility
In another example of the factors that affect manufacturing operations’ profitability, Dr. Martin explains “Here you have ore and electricity entering the crushing circuit, and ground materials coming out. Three factors affect profitability – energy and material costs at the time consumed, and the value of the final product at the time it is produced,” he adds “You need to calculate these three variables and put them into the control system. The traditional control algorithm will, say, open a valve or manage the speed. But with real-time accounting, an algorithm will calculate the production value at each stage for each particular period and put that value into a historian for storage and future analysis. As a result, you have a day-long list of values at every point where cost is incurred.”
Think of this visibility and data management approach as a stock ticker for the value of a given stock throughout the trading day. Manufacturers already taking advantage of automation on the factory floor or in business processes, with the help of ERP systems, can further supplement their operations with profitability control.
Using these costs and fluctuations throughout the day, managers can more accurately forecast, budget, and negotiate with real-time accounting tools. The focus shifts from a month-to-month approach to analysis that’s long outdated in favor of a second-to-second one. This provides superior control in terms of a manufacturing operation’s profitability and automation efforts already in place.
Profitability Control With ERP
Beyond offering invaluable insight into expenditures of capital and resources, ERP solutions bring a lot to the table.
One of the biggest game changers for discrete manufacturers and process manufacturers is the ability to reduce waste significantly. The waste of time, money, materials, and labor can all be addressed with better visibility of demand and quicker communication. This ensures that the right amount of products are being produced to fill orders and changes are taken into account. Error reduction fits hand-in-hand with unnecessary waste. Identifying process and material issues can reduce the cost of scrap or reworking orders, which controls costs and increases profitability.
Communication throughout the ERP system is fast and efficient, as well. This ensures the right information is on hand and users have access to the information they need. As a result, time wasted in tracking down order details, erroneous data, and miscommunications are less likely to occur. When the entire organization is on the same system and working cooperatively, better productivity is the result. Consistency and reliability ensure higher customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, which further increases profits over time as the business grows.
Improving productivity and controlling costs should be among the highest priorities for a business. With ERP solutions, important delivery in full and on time (DIFOT) metrics inform your organization of delivery performance in a supply chain. It also measures how often your customers get what they want at the time they want it. Stronger performance impacts your bottom line and ERP can help streamline all the processes involved.
Encompass Solutions, Inc. is an ERP consulting firm and Epicor Platinum Partner that offers professional services in business consulting, project management, and software implementation. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems or addressing emerging challenges in corporate and operational growth, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. As experts in identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of the Industry.
Automotive service providers thriving in today’s challenging
economic climate often have one thing in common – a drive to pursue continuous
improvement. Successful shops are always looking for ways to increase sales and
revenue and give customers more reasons to remain loyal. Shop professionals can see a powerful new
solution to this challenge in the Epicor booth at this week’s Automotive
Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX) in Las Vegas. That solution is the Epicor Integrated Service Estimator.
Epicor Integrated Service Estimator (ISE)
Epicor is expanding its presence in the automotive service
sector with each new generation of the powerful Epicor Integrated Service
Estimator (ISE) web-based service estimating and parts sourcing solution. This
business-building tool provides shop professionals with instant, one-click
access to automotive parts information, pricing and local availability, as well
as labor information, OE service intervals and other critical information
needed to boost mechanical repair sales and bay productivity.
Epicor Integrated Service Estimator Expansion
By extending the Epicor Integrated Service
Estimator efficiency benefits to technicians, the optional “Smart Inspection” mobile tool helps
service providers instantly capture and communicate the results of comprehensive,
guided vehicle inspections. This innovative new feature lets technicians use
tablet computers to photograph and record the condition of key vehicle systems
and components. They can then deliver this information to the customer in a customized report and import the results to their shop’s point-of-sale system.
By providing quick access to more than 11 million parts from
over 7,800 manufacturer product lines, Epicor Integrated Service
Estimator allows users to expand into virtually any mechanical service category and create professional job estimates in as little as one minute. With the addition of our new Smart Inspection feature, the tool has become that much more powerful by giving technicians a way to help eliminate manual data input and offer consumers the information needed to make more informed decisions.
Already, ISE is helping thousands of automotive service, tire, and oil-and-lube businesses increase productivity and boost mechanical sales by allowing them to quickly and efficiently import parts, labor and pricing information into their estimates, work orders and invoices. And the new Smart Inspection tool is indicative of what many successful automotive service businesses already know – there is always room to improve.
Top 10 Benefits Of The Epicor Integrated Service Estimator
Automotive repair shops receive substantial benefits when utilizing the full potential of the Epicor Integrated Service Estimator™, which include.
Expansion into virtually any mechanical service category through instant access to information on more than 10 million parts from over 7,800 manufacturer product lines
Drive sales of high-value/high-margin jobs through an integrated database of OE-recommended service intervals
Enabling service writers fast, confident and effective recommendations when providing add-on services by putting more information at their fingertips
Save time on every estimate with one-click access to part details, photos, pricing, and local availability
Elimination of estimating errors with documented parts and labor requirements for each job
Closing more sales and impressing customers by quickly producing accurate, professionally printed mechanical estimates
Completing estimates and repair orders in as little as one minute by eliminating the need to rekey parts and labor information
Increasing bay and technician productivity by electronically confirming part availability through local suppliers
Quickly creating comprehensive, accurate estimates on complex mechanical repairs through more than 400 custom job packages
Avoid time-consuming software maintenance with a cloud-based architecture that ensures you’re always running the latest and best version Learn more about Integrated Service Estimator.
Encompass Solutions is a business and software consulting firm that specializes in ERP systems, EDI, and Managed Services support for Manufacturers and Distributors. Serving small and medium-sized businesses since 2001, Encompass modernizes operations and automates processes for hundreds of customers across the globe. Whether undertaking full-scale implementation, integration, and renovation of existing systems, Encompass provides a specialized approach to every client’s needs. By identifying customer requirements and addressing them with the right solutions, we ensure our clients are equipped to match the pace of Industry.
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