Broken links

Walk into most manufacturing businesses and it's not difficult to spot a fundamental flaw in the logic that underpins their approach to ERP systems, reckons Keith Pittaway, sales manager at Microsoft Dynamics Gold ERP partner Syscom. Simply put, he explains, it's not unusual for manufacturers to have manufacturing systems offering a rich set of manufacturing-specific functionality: quality systems, manufacturing execution systems and OEE systems, for instance. But, he charges, it is unusual to find those systems well integrated – or even integrated at all – to those same manufacturers' ERP systems. "When it comes to implementing ERP systems, manufacturers focus on functions such as sales and finance, and somehow never quite get around to integrating ERP with their existing manufacturing systems," he points out. "But for a manufacturer, these plant-floor systems are a vital part of their competitive edge – as much as the sales and finance functionality of the ERP system." In short, says Pittaway, manufacturers are missing out. They're missing out on opportunities to get real-time access to plant-floor data, they're missing out on manufacturing-specific management reporting opportunities, and they're missing out on opportunities to gain real-time visibility into factory-floor works orders and work-in-progress. And put like that, it's difficult to refute the argument. Manufacturers specialise in, well, manufacturing. For vital systems supporting the manufacturing process to be isolated from the main IT backbone of the business seems illogical. But, indisputably, that's the reality of modern manufacturing. ERP systems reach into every corner of the business, except that part of it that is most fundamental to what a manufacturer does – namely, manufacturing. So how has such a situation arisen? And what can manufacturers do about it? Perhaps surprisingly, Pittaway is optimistic that the dichotomy that he sees is a problem of the past, and not necessarily the future. Turn the clock back even 10 years, he observes, and implementing an ERP system was a daunting task. The timescale was measured in months, if not years. A small army of consultants was often required to codify business processes and reflect them within the new system. And from an organisational point of view, implementing an ERP system consumed a huge amount of internal resource – often the business's best, brightest and most able people. Likewise, extending ERP to the factory floor, and to the systems residing there, was also a challenge. Data interfaces had to be developed and de-bugged, decisions taken about protocols and communications standards, and 'middleware' investigated and acquired. Turn the clock forward to today, and that picture has changed considerably, and in two important ways. First, communication between systems has become simpler, thanks to new standards and communication protocols in the shape of XML, web services and similar advances. And secondly, ERP systems themselves have changed, and these days offer a lot more feature-rich, industry-specific functionality, covering a range of vertical industries. Better still, that functionality is often in the form of best practice 'templates', ready to be applied at the push of a button. The upshot is that implementing an ERP system today isn't just quicker, cheaper and easier – it also results in a higher-quality implementation and a system pre-configured around best practice for the vertical industry in question. "Take Microsoft Dynamics AX," says Pittaway. "From the ground up, it's been designed to provide a feature-rich set of functionality for a wide array of vertical industry sectors – and to do so without customisation. The saving in implementation effort and cost is considerable." All of which is good news, of course. But the real opportunity comes from the ability to strategically redeploy that implementation effort into building links with plant-floor systems. Links which are now easier and simpler to build, of course, thanks to advances in communication standards and protocols. "Return on investment can be greatly increased by reducing implementation timescales and broadening the scope of the project to include complex business areas such as shopfloor data capture (SFDC)", says Pittaway. "These can be carefully planned and structured into low-risk, high-return, manageable chunks. "Extending ERP to the factory floor is always the 'next step' that never quite gets underway," sums up Pittaway. "And now, with their investments in modern feature-rich ERP solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, manufacturers have a real opportunity to break the mould. There's no longer an excuse for not going the 'final mile' – and doing so has never been easier to achieve."