Ironclad Results

Metal fabricators have seen significant results from implementing Made2Manage ERP. Customers in the industry typically experience:

• 7-20% reductions in inventory and associated carrying costs
• 11-21% reductions in product lead times
• 95-96% on-time promise-to-delivery rates

Putting Our Stamp On The Industry

Whether you produce highly-engineered products, such as HVAC units, with small production runs, or manufacture high volumes of make-to-stock products, such as bolts and screws, Made2Manage has 18 years of experience working with fabricated metal manufacturers. With hundreds of implementations completed, we’ve come to understand the way you operate. For example, you may be trying to balance:

With Made2Manage ERP, you can more efficiently execute these critical operations and manage all aspects of your fabricated metals business.

Forging A Specialized Solution

Made2Manage ERP is equipped with the comprehensive functionality that you, as a fabricated metals manufacturer, need to run your business. The real-time, centralized flow of data integrates information throughout all areas of your business so you can increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and generate more profit. Although there are many functional requirements to consider when evaluating enterprise software, Made2Manage delivers specialized features for:

• Meeting precision requirements (quality management)
• Collaborating with customers, engineering and production
• Managing multi-dimensional inventory and lot control
• Maximizing your resources and reducing bottlenecks (planning and scheduling)
• Determining accurate job costs

Let’s examine how Made2Manage administers these critical functions.

Meeting Precision Requirements

Consona has teamed with Powerway, a leading provider of quality management software for the manufacturing industry, to offer you a fully-integrated quality management solution so you can remain responsive as customer specifications change. Now you can automate paper-intensive revision processes using Powerway’s document management solution. These tools help your employees gain real-time visibility into your key documents so that the right people can view the right documents as changes occur.

For visibility into quality processes at the component level, you can use the Engineering Advantage feature. Engineering Advantage helps you to link and manage related component-level documents. You can access and maintain Gage R & R (repeatability and reproducibility) studies to identify and reduce measurement variation, capability studies, set up instructions, CAD/CAM files and forms. With timely information, you can reduce data entry efforts, identify sub-standard quality, earlier and keep your customers happy.

To help you reduce scrap, rework, variations and defects, Made2Manage and Powerway provide you with real-time statistical process control (SPC). These quality management tools collect, manage and analyze your gauge and machine data to quickly identify out-of-tolerance processes. With SPC, you can automate time-intensive data entry through real-time integration with your gauges and machines.

Of course, some rerouting and reworking of products may be needed to meet design specifications. You can save money on scrap by easily re-routing and re-working products that don’t meet precision requirements through the Made2Manage back-office.

Collaborating With Customers, Engineering and Production

Capturing and communicating design changes with your customers, engineers and production staff requires considerable collaboration—all parties have to be on the same page to ensure customer satisfaction. Make use of Made2Manage Systems’ enterprise portal, M2M VIP to facilitate the design/configuration of products at the front end of the job order. M2M VIP collaboration software helps you share information with all the elements of your supply chain. For example, you can configure products over the Web with your customers, customers can access warranty information and specs for part numbers in their own product catalog, and your sales team can enter quotes and orders directly into the system to jumpstart production.

As changes occur in the design of your custom-built or custom-configured jobs, the Made2Manage ERP engineering change management feature provides you with a full auditing of critical documents, as well as multiple revision levels for the item master, standard BOMs and routing records. The seamless flow of data makes it easy for you to determine how design changes will affect your entire organization and help you to communicate revisions to the shop floor in real time.

Managing Multi-dimensional Inventory and Lot Control

Since you may have many different types, sizes and alloys of component materials that need to be measured, we offer multi-dimensional inventory (MDI) capabilities. With MDI, you can specify requirements in multiple dimensions and capture inventory transactions in alternate units of measure. For instance, you can track unconsumed sheet metal, as well as remnant, drop and salvage materials with different dimensions and units of measure throughout the production cycle. In effect, you can “loan out” these materials from inventory to manufacturing and accept reclassified items back into inventory for improved visibility and accuracy. The materials may then be back-flushed against corresponding jobs.

To help you manage the materials that go into your production process, Consona has developed robust lot tracking capabilities. Lot control within Made2Manage ERP software will assist you in assigning and tracking bar codes or unique heat numbers to raw materials, subassemblies and/or finished goods. You can easily trace where lot-controlled parts were used and determine which lots were used in the final product.

Maximizing Your Resources and Reducing Bottlenecks

With real-time, theory-of-constraints-based, Made2Manage Advanced Planning and Scheduling applications, you can more effectively synchronize the demand for your products with your production capabilities, optimize the use of your capital-intensive resources, and get more products out the door faster. The M2M Advanced Planning and Scheduling applications share data in real time with your M2M ERP back office to help you make the best possible production decisions. By streamlining your supply chain, you will raise your customer service levels, reduce your costs, and increase your profits.

Of course, you have to promise realistic delivery dates during the sales process to keep your customers satisfied. To keep your sales in line with tight production deadlines, the embedded Capable to Promise (CTP) feature helps your order-takers quickly and accurately determine whether or not you can meet requested delivery dates based on available capacity and constraints.

Regardless of your manufacturing style, Made2Manage offers robust supply chain management tools to suit the unique needs of your fabricated metals business. For example:

• Repetitive manufacturers (make-to-stock) with simple shop floors can use advanced (finite) planning tools to generate a capacity-based daily build plan.
• Engineer-to-order and/or make-to-order manufacturers can employ a combination of infinite planning and advanced (finite) scheduling tools to reduce bottlenecks.
• Mixed-mode manufacturers with complex operations can take advantage of both finite planning and scheduling applications to increase throughput.

Determining Accurate Job Costs

The Made2Manage order-costing feature provides the visibility you need to monitor costs throughout your entire production process. Made2Manage order costing helps you capture changes as they occur in the production process, track costs as they vary from the initial order, and determine what costs the customer has added to the order. You can accumulate costs (and unplanned costs) as they flow through the system so you can see where you are spending your money in the manufacturing process. In addition, you can analyze costs in job orders and inventory and transfer them to the general ledger.