ERP Manufacturing

Manufacturing Planning Software

Manufacturing planning software, also sometimes called enterprise resource planning software for manufacturing systems, is becoming increasingly accessible to smaller and smaller businesses. If you own a small or mid-sized business, or if you’re a technology manager on the lookout for shop floor and back office management tools, you may have examined the possibility of ERP manufacturing planning software a few years ago and dismissed the option for budget reasons. If this is the case, the time has come to reopen the possibility and take a new look at what manufacturing planning software can do to improve your bottom line.  

ERP manufacturing planning software first came onto the market in the early 1990s and was designed to free manufacturing firms from a diverse collection of incompatible and outdated software platforms. Manufacturing planning software, by integrating multiple functions onto a single unified platform, allowed large manufacturing firms to coordinate and schedule shop floor activities. Manufacturing planning software also allowed these firms to improve communication between departments. Running software programs on a single server architecture allowed employees across a variety of business units to share access to secure databases that could be updated in real time. Unfortunately, all of these advantages came at a high cost, so early ERP manufacturing planning systems were available only to large firms that could withstand a high degree of financial risk. These early manufacturing planning software implementations sometimes failed altogether, usually due to poor communication during the installation or insufficient employee training.

But later versions of manufacturing planning software were more reliable, and they soon generated a high level of demand among large firms, even those outside the manufacturing sector, like government offices and university systems.  And over time, as the high budget market became saturated, developers began to tune their attention downstream in order to compete for market share and court the interest of smaller business clients with more restrictive technology budgets.

At this point, established developers and providers of manufacturing planning software are working to scale and customize their product suites in order to appeal to potential small business clients. As they do this, they face competitive pressure from new options available to small business owners. Some of these manufacturing planning software options include hosting solutions and software service providers, who can allow small clients to rent space on a shared server architecture, which can help these small clients sidestep the cost of server maintenance and ownership.

Other manufacturing planning software and back office software tools for small business owners can be found on the internet as freeware and open source software solutions. These are basic software modules that manufacturing and other small firms can use to control accounting and human resource functions.

Written by :

tracey boxer