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If you operate within the manufacturing industry and want to optimize business profitability, then you must monitor relevant performance metrics. By closely tracking the right manufacturing metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your business and identify ways to improve core processes.
When your company receives an order, how do you know whether you can fulfill it? There’s a considerable number of factors that go into creating a product, with raw material availability, employee labor, and the delivery chain all having an impact on when that product can actually make it into the hands of customers.
Barcoding, also known as automatic identification (Auto-ID) provides companies with an effective way of tracking, identifying, and managing items.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s this: The best-laid plans can be derailed in an instant. Though it’s unlikely we will face any kind of crisis like the COVID-19 outbreak in the foreseeable future, the last six months need to be a learning experience for all leaders. But as the economy slowly moves to reopen, it pays to not only understand what’s next, but to remain focused on what got you where you are today.
Times have changed. Whether you’re reading this in the midst of the pandemic or after everything has gone back to normal, you know that the way businesses operate has evolved, and success relies on your ability to be adaptable. But the times have been changing for a while now—and not just because of the Coronavirus outbreak. Over the past decade, everything from manufacturing processes to the way goods are purchased has changed, and it pays to stay ahead.
Running a business is simple, right? You just have to make more money than you spend. How hard is that? If you’re a manufacturing business, you already know that in reality, there’s no “easy button” that gets you from ‘existing’ to ‘profit’.
Manufacturing is the science of combining every item, process, and system so it makes a product that’s perfect. When everything needs to flow how you need it to you, you can’t handle any hiccups or disruptions—and that includes your back-office software. Luckily, more manufacturers than ever are turning to the cloud with the help of Acumatica and Cloud 9 ERP Solutions.
Predictions for the coming year are a staple of the blogging-industrial complex. You’ll surely see a lot of them around this time of year. The challenge, though, with prognosticating about manufacturing for the coming year is to differentiate between common trends and truly new forces that will affect how manufacturers function and make money. Competition is a given. Changing customer expectations are a given. What’s coming in 2020 that will have an impact? Where will cloud ERP make a difference? At Cloud 9 ERP Solutions, we understand the challenges that manufacturers face, so here are some of our thoughts on 2020 manufacturing industry trends.
Like the popular credit card commercials that ask, “What’s in your wallet?” a good ERP solution provider should ask, “What’s in your factory?” Having worked with many manufacturing customers over the years, we can confidently say that no two are quite alike. Some produce millions of items that cost a few cents each. Others produce a single product, like a locomotive or a jet engine that sells for millions of dollars. There’s make-to-order, make-to-inventory and project shops. Some manufacturers only make one thing over and over, like companies who produce thousands of miles of copper wire every day.
Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author, wrote “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." He could have been describing the management of a manufacturing business. It’s true that all manufacturers share a number of common characteristics. They all take in components and raw materials and turn them into manufactured goods. They have inventories of parts and materials, work-in-progress and finished goods. They deal with logistics and shipping.