Business System Software Demos
This website is to provide you with information about manufacturing-related software systems that can be implemented in UK manufacturing companies such as MRP systems and to allow you to book a demo of the system of your choice. Using the links on the left you will be able to find out what the benfits of VMI are, what warehouse management management software is and so on.. Should you wish to arrange a system demo or require the use of a consultant to help you select, project manage or implement your manufacturing software or if you need a bespoke system designing and implementing then please contact us with some details about your project.
SCM Supply Chain Management Systems
Supply chain management (SCM) is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the operations of the supply chain with the purpose to satisfy customer requirements as efficiently as possible. Supply chain management spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point-of-origin to point-of-consumption. The following strategic and competitive areas can be used to their full advantage if a supply chain management system is properly implemented...
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) integrate the data and processes of an organization into a unified system (in theory!). A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software to achieve the integration. A key feature of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules. The term ERP originally implied systems designed to plan the utilisation of enterprise-wide resources. Although the acronym ERP originated in the manufacturing environment, today's use of the term ERP systems has much broader scope. ERP systems typically attempt to cover all basic functions of a company, regardless of the nature of its business...
Project Management Software
Project management software is a term covering many types of software, including scheduling, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication and documentation systems, which are used to deal with the complexity of large projects. Project management is the discipline of organising and managing resources in such a way that these resources deliver all the work required to complete a project within defined scope, time, and cost constraints. A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. This property of being a temporary and a one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over-and-over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project management...
BOM Bill of Material
A bill of materials or bill of material (BOM) describes a product in terms of its assemblies, sub-assemblies, and basic parts. Basically consisting of a list of parts, a BOM is an essential aspect of the design and manufacture of any product...
CRM Customer Relationship Management System
Customer relationship management software (CRM) covers methods used by companies to manage their relationships with clients. Information stored on existing customers and potential customers is analysed and used to this end. Automated CRM processes are often used to generate automatic personalised marketing based on the customer information stored in the database...
Change Management
Organisational change management is the process of developing a planned approach to change in an organisation. Typically the objective is to maximise the collective benefits for all people involved in the change and minimise the risk of failure of implementing the change, such as implementing an MRP system etc. The discipline of change management deals primarily with the human aspect of change, and is therefore is essentially psychological in nature...
APS Advanced Planning and Scheduling Systems
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) refers to a manufacturing management process by which raw materials and production capacity are optimally allocated to meet demand. APS is especially well-suited to environments where simpler planning methods cannot adequately address complex trade-off's between competing priorities...
VMI Vendor Managed Inventory
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) describes a family of business models in which the buyer of a product provides information to a supplier of that product and the supplier takes full responsibility for maintaining an agreed inventory of the material, usually at the buyer's factory / warehouse...
Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is a japanese-originating management philosophy focusing on reducing of the seven wastes. By eliminating waste (muda), quality is improved, production time and costs are reduced. To solve the problem of waste, Lean Manufacturing has several tools at its disposal. These include constant process analysis (kaizen), 'pull' production (using kanban) and mistake-proofing (poka-yoke). Key lean manufacturing principles include...
JIT Just in Time
Just In Time Manufacturing (JIT) is an production and inventory management strategy implemented to improve the return on investment of a business by reducing in-process inventory and its associated costs. The process is driven by a series of signals, or Kanban, that tell production processes to make the next part. Kanban are usually simple visual signals, such as the presence or absence of a part on a shelf. JIT can lead to dramatic improvements in a manufacturing organisation's return on investment, quality, and efficiency when implemented correctly...
HRM Human Resource Management Systems
Human Resource Management (HRM) is a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a company's workforce. The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavors are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process...
MIS Management Information System
Management Information Systems is the application of people, technologies, and procedures, i.e. the information system, to business problems. This field is directly linked to Management by objectives and to the monitoring of Key performance indicators. It can also help in processing specific information for decision making (for example analyse customer behavior). Potential benefits of MIS investments: Investing in information systems can pay off for a company in many ways...
MES Manufacturing Execution System
A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is a system that companies can use to measure and control production activities with the aim of increasing productivity and improving quality. The ISA defines standards regarding the structuring of MES and its integration in a larger company-wide IT architecture. ISA-95 "Enterprise-Control System Integration" defines a layer model looking at the integration aspects between ERP, MES and the production control level. It is supported by several vendors in the MES area. ISA-S88 "General and Site Recipe Models and Representation" defines a process state model for the batch industry. The execution system is that the part of the production planning and control system (ERP, MRP etc) that puts the plans into action i.e. that 'executes' the plan and as such is concerned primarilly with activity and progress at the shop floor level...
Kanban
Kanban is a concept related to the Just In Time (JIT) production and latterly Lean Maufacturing, however these two concepts are not the same thing. From a JIT perspective, kanban is the means through which JIT is managed and is effectively a signaling system, kanban uses cards to signal the need for an item i.e. kanban are used to trigger the movement, production, or supply of a unit in a factory...
Production Planning System
Manufacturing planning and control entails the acquisition and allocation of limited resources to production activities so as to satisfy customer demand over a specified time horizon. As such, planning and control problems are inherently optimisation problems, where the objective is to develop a plan that meets demand at minimum cost or that fills the demand that maximises profit. The underlying optimisation problem will vary due to differences in the manufacturing and market context...
Accounting Software
Accounting software is computer software that records and processes accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll and trial balance. It functions as an accounting information system and may be developed in-house or it can be purchased from a third party as an 'off-the-shelf' accounting package (i.e. Sage Line 50, QuickBooks etc) or it can be one of the functional modules available in a larger system such as ERP. Increasingly accounting packages / modules are modified to suit the company they are to be used by...
Logistics
Logistics is the technique of managing and controlling the flow of goods, energy, information and other resources like products, services, and people, from the source of production to the marketplace. It is difficult to accomplish any marketing or manufacturing without logistical support. It involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging. The operating responsibility of logistics is the geographical repositioning of raw materials, work in process, and finished inventories where required at the lowest cost possible while meeting customer demand. The issue is not the transportation itself, but to streamline and control the flow through the value adding processes and eliminate non-value adding ones...
CMMS Computerised Maintenance Management Systems
Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) are also known as Enterprise Asset Management systems. A CMMS software package maintains a computer database of information about an organisation’s assets and their associated maintenance operations. This information is intended to help maintenance workers do their jobs more effectively and to help management make informed decisions (for example, calculating the cost of maintenance for each piece of equipment used by the organisation, possibly leading to better allocation of resources). The information may also be useful when dealing with third parties, if, for example, an organisation is involved in a liability case, the data in a CMMS database can serve as evidence that proper safety maintenance has been performed...
MRP II Manufacturing Resource Planning Systems
Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) is defined by APICS as a method for the effective planning of all resources of a manufacturing company. Ideally, it addresses operational planning in units, financial planning in dollars/pounds, and has a simulation capability to answer "what-if" questions and extension of closed-loop MRP...
TQM Total Quality Management
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organisational processes. TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, government, and service industries. Total Quality provides an umbrella under which everyone in the organisation can strive and create customer satisfaction. TQ is a people focused management system that aims at continual increase in customer satisfaction at continually lower real costs (c.f. JIT, Lean and Kaizen)...
WMS Warehouse Management Systems
Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) are a key part of the supply chain and provide directed stock rotation, intelligent picking directives, automatic consolidation and cross-docking to maximise the use of valuable warehouse space. The systems also direct and optimises stock put-away based on real-time information about the status of bin utilisation. Having a WMS in place means you don't depend any more on people's experience, the system has the intelligence built into its driving algorithm...
RFID Radio Frequency ID (Active Tag)
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is an object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product for the purpose of identification using radio waves. Chip-based RFID tags contain silicon chips and antennas. Passive tags require no internal power source, whereas active tags require a power source. An RFID system may consist of several components: tags/transponders, tag readers, antenna, middleware/application software...
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