The Infor Operating Service (or Infor OS) is a cloud innovation platform of Infor-built applications that significantly enhance CloudSuite ERP.
The Infor OS platform is included with the CloudSuite ERP subscription. Infor OS is composed of many applications that allow CloudSuite customers to maximize the use of their purpose-built ERP.
The upside of buying enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is the economy of scale. Since it is written for the masses and not customized for one company, the cost per user plummets. For example, Microsoft Office certainly costs more to develop than the few hundred dollars it costs to license. One of the other upsides is that thousands of users create a robust community that quickly flushes out weaknesses in functionality, helping the software become stronger. The downside is that the ERP may not be totally in sync with the company’s culture, and that’s when most people start to think about ERP integrations. To give an instance, what some may call a production order, the ERP may refer to as a work order. Some of the ERP system’s screens may be laid out differently than what the company would have preferred. Or maybe the processes the software supports are not in total alignment with the company’s current processes.
More and more of our customers want to have visibility of variables affecting manufacturing. They need clear information about capacity and on-time delivery, potential capacity or supply chain issues, and job costs. Our customers are getting this visibility by leveraging the Infor ERP application’s manufacturing industry purpose-built functional abilities.
ERP data migration is a big step in the implementation process that is critical to get right. The ERP system will not function at optimal levels otherwise. Smaller start-up companies typically have less data to convert than larger businesses that have been around for decades, but data migration takes place in all implementations. So, what is it? In simple terms, it is getting the information out of the old system and putting it in the new system.
One of the most common questions we hear during implementations lead by Visual South is, “Can we connect our current solution to your ERP system?” The answer is YES. The Infor API (Application Programming Interface) Toolkit was built with the different manufacturing verticals in mind to manage all connected applications. In other words, it connects different applications across internal platforms or third-party platforms to share information.
There are many opinions as to what key performance indicators (KPIs) should be monitored at a small to medium-sized manufacturing company, but the on-time delivery (OTD) KPI is on everyone’s list. It doesn’t matter if the company is build-to-stock, a job shop, or something in-between; there are many steps in coordinating the production of a product and OTD is a nice summation of manufacturing performance.
The term ERP security generally refers to two different things. The first is the security at the ERP user level inside the system itself. The second is the security of the ERP data as it relates to external threats (i.e., hackers) that want to access the system. I am going to focus on the second item in this blog.
I’ve been involved with manufacturing and ERP for over 30 years. During that time, I’ve learned a lot about the interaction between a manufacturing organization, their goals, and their ERP (or lack thereof). I’ve seen companies who have a good plan for choosing ERP; I’ve seen companies that don’t. I’ve seen companies that use ERP well; I’ve seen companies that don’t. I’ve seen companies admit they weren’t using ERP well and then work towards fixing that problem. I’ve seen companies admit they weren’t using ERP well and then lose interest in using it better. I’ve also seen a common thread between the companies who excel in selecting/using ERP, and those that don’t. The ones who excel have the expertise to develop a good strategy and execute it, or they admit they don’t have the expertise and they get help. They view the cost of getting help as an investment that has a payback. The ones who don’t excel aren’t aware they don’t have the expertise, so they never get the help they need. They view the cost of getting help as an expense.
Formal research indicates that companies with a strategic plan perform better and generate better results than those who do not. Per the ASPA (American Society for Public Administration), “There is a direct and positive relationship between strategic planning and performance… It is concluded that strategic planning is a beneficial activity for all firms.” But you need not look to research studies to come to that conclusion. Companies like Dell, Southwest Airlines, IKEA, Cisco, Starbucks, and Proctor & Gamble have all excelled in the marketplace, and returned better than average profits as a result of their robust strategic planning programs.
Capacity planning in manufacturing is a big job and sometimes an even bigger headache. The methods we’ve seen used to perform this task include spreadsheets, whiteboards, pencils and paper, a big stick, and ERP software. In many cases, it’s a combination of any of the above.
In this article, we will explain how to structure your manufacturing capacity planning to work in any software. Our goal is to eliminate the need for using the “non-software” options listed above (although the big stick can usually be reassigned elsewhere effectively).
