Manufacturers speed production with ERP warehouse integration

April 23, 2011 - PRLog -- Manufacturing ERP systems aren't much good without tight integration to the warehouse and shop floor. Sometimes that integration comes entirely within a monolithic ERP suite. Other times, it requires tying together software from different vendors through ERP warehouse integration.

The Gem Group Inc. opted for the latter when it implemented IFS Applications, a componentized ERP suite, two years ago. Headquartered in Lawrence, Mass., and operating under the Gemline name, the company sells promotional items, such as pens and duffel bags, to distributors. It designs the items, outsources their manufacture, then custom-prints or embroiders them, often under tight deadlines.

Before installing IFS Applications, Gemline ran an old, highly customized SyteLine ERP system from MAPICS that was integrated with Frontstep's customer relationship management (CRM) package. The hardware, a Hewlett-Packard Unix server, was no longer supported. While the two applications served the finance and customer-service departments, the manufacturing side had to get by on Microsoft Access and Excel for such mission-critical tasks as scheduling, inventory and routing.

Gemline wanted to process orders through manufacturing more efficiently to maximize use of materials and capacity and minimize missed orders. "Everything we do from an order standpoint is custom," said Peter Richards, Gemline's planning and scheduling manager. That means Gemline can't treat orders the way many manufacturers do, with processes that dictate when the product can be shipped. "Here, it's the other way around," Richards said. "You look at when the customer needs it, and then figure out how you're going to deliver it."

As a result, when the time came to implement IFS, "there was a big focus on scheduling," said Tom Conlon, Gemline's manager of business applications and a former IFS employee assigned to the project.

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