MANUFACTURING SOFTWARE Small shops need an ERP system to effectively run
today’s manufacturing operations, which are more complex and fast-paced than ever, especially in made-to-order manu- facturing environments.
“No business is too small for an ERP solution.”
“The truth is, in today’s business landscape, no business is too small for an ERP solution,” said Jeremy Klosowski, GM and director, sales and marketing, Realtrac Performance ERP (Livonia, MI), developer of Realtrac ERP. “Realtrac al- lows small businesses to operate, appear and compete like a large-scale enterprise. It allows management to do much more with much less and capture cost with true visibility while sharing information across various departments in an organization to reach production goals.”
Check the Big Board
Newer technologies like big-screen options take ERP scheduling and job management from paper or the desktop to very large touchscreen-enabled electronic boards accessible in the shop and on the factory fl oor. In the past year, Henning, who worked with a longtime customer, Littlestar Plastics (Rockford, IL), to develop a convenient shop-fl oor big-board touchscreen, introduced its new Touch Scheduling Board. Similarly, Realtrac this fall intro- duced its new Rightboard touchscreen scheduling system. “Our Touch Scheduling Board emulates and is designed to replace the magnetic scheduling boards often found in shops,” Henning said. “Our touch- based scheduling board provides an intuitive user interface and familiar magnetic board metaphor, thus reducing the user’s learning curve, making it much easier for shop-fl oor personnel to prioritize operations, view/ set statuses and move operations from one work center to another.” The scheduling board also enables authorized us- ers to change run quantities based on release coverage, view due dates, redefi ne routers and assign employees to work centers and/or operations.
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AdvancedManufacturing.org | December 2016 Users can even color code cards by customer, defi ne on-
the-fl y operational performance notes that can be shared with other shop personnel and set a variety of shop order statuses, such as “Waiting for Material,” Henning added, and animated icons are used to show hot and late jobs. Realtrac is always making improvements to stay com- petitive and be the fi rst in its class of small-to-medium size shops, Klosowski said. “We have recently launched our touch-screen electronic Rightboard, and RFQ [Request for Quote], to name a few. Each feature has an extremely large impact for costing and real-time operations,” Klosowski noted. “The Rightboard allows you to move jobs throughout your departments to workstations from a job pool with drag- and-drop technology, dramatically increasing workfl ow. The touchscreen allows you to see where your operations are in your shop as well as the timeline for that operation capturing employee rates. RFQ has multiple levels of quoting and add- ing vendors, shaving hours off your week.”
More mobile information is easily accessible by users via either smartphones or tablet computers with the new Glovia G2 ERP system from Fujitsu Glovia Inc.
Mobile Access to ERP
The use of mobile devices with smartphones and tablets also continues to grow, and mobile devices have become much more accepted on the shop fl oor. “Henning Software offers a mobile option that we have named iVET that has an employee portal feature enabling shop-fl oor personnel to view their operational performance statistics, effi ciencies, workcenter schedules, inventory levels, job assignments and
Photo courtesy Fujitsu Glovia Inc.
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