Among the requirements process manufacturers have that are completely foreign to discrete manufacturers are Units of Measure. Chances are, all your formulations, all your sales units and purchasing units have been expressed in the same units for years and years, say drams, ounces, pints, quarts, gallons, barrels, etc. To sell globally, however, you have to convert those to milliliters, centiliters, deciliters, etc. Does the ERP system you are considering have A) units of measures your are familiar with and B) robust capability for converting between U.S. standards and metric units?  

ERP Manufacturing

Process manufacturers have unique ERP system requirements. (Part 2)

You want a system that allows you to express units of measure in the system the customer requires, but that automatically converts units to a single standard for reporting and financial purposes. If the vendor has been insightful enough to convert the unit field to measures used in your industry, that’s a start. But if they haven’t gone as far as accommodating all standard units of measure with automated conversion calculations, how many other nuances of the process manufacturing sector don’t they get?

Quality in discrete manufacturing is usually an add-on application that tracks after- the-fact measurements. Quality in process manufacturing, of course, is a critical factor that must be tracked in real time. Quality parameters need to be visible to key personnel and alerts must be actionable. So the ERP system can’t treat quality as an add-on feature. Quality is an operational variable that can affect cost and pricing, formulation of admixtures, even plant safety. Incoming raw materials might be assigned to different storage areas, or flagged for use in different products based on their inspected quality. Finally, quality information has to be accessible to the customer, since it can affect how they do business as well. Insist on an ERP system that emphasizes quality and that enables the implementation of relative quality measurements and reports.

There’s just one way to make a Chevy Malibu. Oh, there may be a thousand variations, but there’s just one assembly line on which allMalibus takes shape using a finite, set-in-concrete bill of materials. Traditional ERP, as a result has this event mentality that’s ill-suited to process manufacturing.  Within the chemical industry, for example, there are many ways to achieve the same final outcome, and the same holds true in pharmaceuticals and food and beverage. Depending on quality, price and availability, formulations may be adjusted. There is not just one way to make the product and the ERP system needs to commemorate each possible alternative.

Written by :

kristine H