Are you in the IT department of a manufacturing company ?

[colin1]

Are large corporate modular software packages good, as they provide lots of functions not worth programming by one IT bod, or are they bad as the company has to change to fit the new software ?

Any ideas related to this question, appreciated (preferably from people who have a bit of experience or knowledge on the subject rather than people who opened this thread by accident).
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colin1 is officially faster than god

[Nebzor]

When I was working at Gleason (Plymouth subsidiary) pretty much everything was done through large pre-written packages (apart from a few machine-specific programs and small scripts done via distribution software.)

I think they chose to do it this way as it put less of a strain on the IT department there (it was only 2 strong for a shopfloor with ~100 machines and a good 200 PCs throughout the building.)

I think it really depends on the context of the company.
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[Kickstart]

Hi

Probably depends on what market you are aiming at.

These days plenty of companies will put up with any old rubbish as long as it is cheap. Even changing the way the company runs to fit in with the software (tail wagging the dog really).

Large companies might well write their own software, or at least buy a heavily customisable package and then throw a large amount at customising it.

As such it depends on what you are aiming it it. The size of company where £1m would be a decades profits, or where £1m would be the afternoons electricity bill.

All the best

Keith
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[chrisw]

Its a matter of scale.

I worked for Herman Miller (worlds 3rd largest office furniture manufacturing apparently) and they always had to customise new software to fit the business processes, thats when they bought new software. The core of the business (the US) runs largely on mainframes implemented around 20+ years ago.

I spent a day at TSTech a couple of years back (the company that makes the interiors for Honda's Swindon plant) and they were in the middle of changing how they worked in order to implement an ERP (previously all run on spreadsheets ). Their operation was actually quite small for what they did so they they didn't seem fussed about making a few admin changes if it ment being able to just bolt in a new package.

[colin1]

[Kickstart]

[nasty]

As said already it would depend on your market and your requirements for the software.

Has anyone done a Requirements Analysis to find out what you actually need? From there you can research off the shelf software to see if it can meet your needs, can it be tailored/customised, if not can an application be developed in house or would a 3rd party developer need to get involved?
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[colin1]

Im a bit new to all this, what sort of off the shelf software would people use to give an equivalent of ERP in a company too small to be worth getting in a typical corporate modular product ?

I know some people just use spreadsheets and standard databases, but are there off the shelf quivalents to ERP systems ? Got any names, I wdnt mind reading a bit about them.

I should be clear, I've recently started a trainee sales job with a big ERP corporate place, and so am curious what users think about the products, and whatever alternatives there are.
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[bazza]

I used to develop industrial ERP software. It can get very expensive having packages/modules tailored for each company.

Personally, I reckon OSS is the way to go; things like:

Compiere or opentaps

or others from here.

Bloody hell. I'm being hepful.

This has to stop.
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[CaNsA]

Dunno if it applies here, but for running jobs at Camelot we use Control-M and Tivoli for notifications.

They both work very well and very intuitive considering the extent of the network (think about how many lottery terminals there are) and the number of game servers including online and interactive wagering. There is a staggering amount of automation needed as the whole operation is incredibly time critical.


HTH

CaNsA

[s44678]

IQMS is an integrated system specifically for plastics manufacturing.

And I think it works in the same way as most others you'll find: i.e. it has the core functions essential to manufacturing (production, ordering, stock control etc) and you buy bolt-ons for any other bits you need or can't do manually (quality, finance etc).

I don't know much about the IT side of such a system, but I've worked with the engineers, toolmakers and production staff when it was implemented.

Pretty sure you can't code your own custom functionality into it (they want you to pay them for that) and also I think it runs on Oracle.

Edit> forgot to add, as Bazza says, it aint cheap.

[D O G]

Although not direcly in IT myself, as an auditor of companies I have to understamd how the management systems work, and the controls they include/facilitate.

In short, I have seen a lot of IT systems in a lot companies.

It should be stated first that the people who buy these systems are not, on the whole, IT bods. Sure they make take some advice from the IT crowd, but they are more interested in what it can do for them than the techy stuff (which is probably why I have seen so manky fuckups).

By and large, any companies which need to control stock movements, processing and costings use either customised software or one off systems. Larger co's (turnover 50m+) generally have their own IT dept doing some customisation to the system within.

Having said that, all of the co's that I have seen who have recently changed their system used customised systems, I think the cost of developing a bespoke system is prohibative.

Personally I believe that you get to a tipping point in the size of the company where fully integrated ERP systems actually become useful (i.e. finance and stock management systems in one). I think that point is higher than most companies believe.

I have personlly seen (and been involved in the resolution of) a disasterous customised SAP implementation which cost over 1.5m in licence and consultant fees, not to mention the impacts on profits of the co, which would be at least the same.

Companies get excited by the promise of a whizzy system which promises to give them great managment data, traceability and increase efficiencies through perpetual stock control etc, but by and large they never live up to expectations.

I like separate finance and stock management systems, as they are generally less complex and less compromised than an integrated system.

My best, and biggest (turnover of over 330m) client used a separate stock system which was custom developed, which had limited interaction with the finance system (i.e. nightly updates), which was again custom developed. Both systems were developed over ten years ago, and the client had a 5 man IT dept continually modifying and maintaining them.

As other people have said, there are specialist packages which just give stock control functions, many of which are tailored to individual industries. These, with a modicum of customisation are generally always up to the job.

If they're not, for usability I would go custom for my operations. Would be initially expensive, but would be written for you, and you could have in house guys maintaining it rather than shelling out for SAP consultants.

I think I have rambled somewhat, but I hope some of it was useful!

[Kickstart]

Hi

To follow up on the above, the costs of screwing up a new system like that can be hideous.

Years ago I worked for a large manufacturing company which tried to implement a new stock control system (basically). Custom written by a large well known IT company. The system didn't work properly. Not only did it cost a massive amount to put right, it cost millions in lost orders.

All the best

Keith
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[D O G]

[G]

The company I've recently joined is doing CRM/Finance(and a few other bits) as 'Software as a Service'; so a managed web based service which you pay monthly for.
Seen plenty of stuff suggesting that as well as obviously a much lower initial investment, the 'TCO' is probably lower.
Doubt we'd cover enough of the 'ERP' you're looking for (and we're soon to be going into Beta, nothing at all released to the public at the mo), but there are others out there that offer more, don't know if a good enough coverage. However, they tend to be based in the US (being UK based targeting UK businesses is one of our definite plus points).

Incidentally, the founders of the company started up the company because they were a business that couldn't find the product they wanted, so decided to write it. However, it's obviously more likely that such people will be around for computing rather than manufacturing industries.

[colin1]

Thanks guys, this gives me some really good ideas to do a bit more research. Nice that its from familiar faces on here too BCF is ace for knowledge on any topic

I'm glad I was sitting down when bazza was helpful, as otherwise I may have fallen over in shock. Top stuff
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[colin1]

[Kickstart]

[panrider_uk]

We have very few packages: Maximo for maintenance management and Exchequer for our accounts.

All other systems are written in house to our own specifications and needs.

We only have 5 people in our I.T. dept. including the manager and only two full time programmers (although we can all program and do systems analysis).

Its a very cost effective solution for us (we're a multi-million £ operation manufacturing carbon fibre)

Edit: The Maximo package was specified by and bought by our engineers. They had consultants come in and customise it and do training. I.T. merely provided the server and desktop support.
The engineers responsible have now left and the system is so heavly customised that we are stuck on v4 (current version is v7) and it will cost an absolute fortune to upgrade - leaving us stuck with an old system running on Windows 2000 server and MS SQL 7. Packages aren't necessarily the best option.


Mark
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Current bikes: Honda ST1100 Pan European. Moto Guzzi V85 TT Travel

[colin1]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Afraid I have seen it the other way. Frankly would not trust a consultant that much. They have experience of their narrow niche, which is fine if by some miracle that narrow niche covers your needs. Similarly the packages developed through them

Businesses vary greatly. How they vary is how they get a competitive advantage. Understanding things properly (by developing and maintaining systems to do it) is how they keep that knowledge and improve their competitive advantage.

Those using off the shelf or barely customised packages are stuck with it, and have lost the skills to improve. They are stuck at a basic level with little chance of improving. Just like those running a McDonalds franchise.

Sure packages have their place. Things that basically are costs with no real competitive advantages. Payroll for example. Or for getting a basic business going from scratch who just need something to base their starting point on.

All the best

Keith
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[colin1]

Yeah that makes sense to me.

So i guess it comes down to whether losing competitive advantage due to in-house procesess, is made up by benefits from increased efficiencies in standardised areas.

To be honest a lot of our customers, are upgrading, or adding modules to an existing product, so they probably arent throwing out some finely tuned business system that has grown organically.

Its all still new to me though and I'm only scratching the surface in knowledge of it.
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