Well, it isn’t a little guy riding around on a bicycle with a notebook and a pen! Let me explain.
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It is a very sophisticated software product that enables those running Manufacturing Plants to coordinate and plan parts, labor, finances, sales and everything else that goes into making things, on one platform without the necessity of having individual people running around here and there to ensure things are running smoothly.
To illustrate the point let me tell you a story. I saw part of a documentary the other day about a very large Chinese manufacturing plant. The documentary was quite fascinating. This is a factory that employs 17,000 workers and produces a staggering number of products. But it wasn’t the volume of what they produce that actually caught my attention. It was how the production lines were kept rolling that made me smile.
There is a guy who rides a bicycle from building to building with a pen and a notebook. His entire job is to see that supplies are gotten to the assembly lines in time for the workers to keep going. You can see the documentary here.
In a country where labor is cheap and people are abundant, it makes total sense to set up your system this way. However, in the US, it doesn’t make near as much sense, although I am sure that some factories still use some variant of this type of system, even if only in isolated departments.
This is where ERP comes in. This highly developed computerized system can keep production lines running, forecast future demand, optimize inventory, enable lean manufacturing and much more. CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine) is one such ERP system and the folks here at LogicData specialize in implementing this system.
Our goal is to make American Manufacturing more profitable and successful and we have done so with many different enterprises. Go to our website to find out more about how ERP can help your enterprise run more smoothly, more profitably and more efficiently.
