What Is
orders. It had an accounting system to do its bookkeeping. Over the years, the company computerized the tracking system, creating its own custom software through a generic provider that could monitor its business resources and keep it on track. But the system lacked sophistication. “Te two programs didn’t talk to each other,” said Kevin
Y
Vecchiarelli, the company’s vice president of engineering and co-owner. “We wanted to link the two together.” What’s more, Yankee’s system was not metalcasting- specific and didn’t provide real time dollar amounts. Te aerospace investment caster wanted an all-encompassing software package that could track actual castings as they went through each operation and passed over the hands of each operator. It found a provider of such a system and installed it in three to four months. “It [has] made job tracking through the shop a lot easier,”
Vecchiarelli said. “My process sheets are much more detailed. I could hand them to any operator on the floor. We could
Everyone talks about it, and everyone does it, but do we really know what the phrase “enterprise resource planning” means? A MODERN CASTING STAFF REPORT
ankee Casting, Enfield, Conn., had been doing it pretty much the same way for several decades. Te company had a system for track- ing its engineering department and work
E-R-P?
implement pictures and tie them through routing. All of my operations and work instructions are barcoded.” Yankee Casting is not alone. Metalcasters have been
doing ERP since before there was a name for it. Whether they were jotting notes about core inventories on a clipboard or logging metal chemistry data into a spreadsheet, produc- tion planning and metalcasting have gone hand in hand since the first production facility tried to coordinate melting, molding and coremaking. Now, the process of monitoring production has come
to be referred to as enterprise resource planning (ERP), and with the help of sophisticated software systems, it has become a route to greater efficiency and profitability in the metalcasting facility.
Blowing Up the Buzzword Definitions for ERP systems abound. Tey “provide the
necessary infrastructure that forms the operational and transactional system of record for manufacturers,” according to information technology consulting firm the Aberdeen Group, Boston. Tey are “cohesive information system[s] to cover all business needs from financial controls and reporting, the
December 2011 MODERN CASTING | 31
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