With the Y2K panic in the late 90’s, many companies and manufacturers scrambled to find enterprise solutions to stop what could be a potentially devastating disruption to their business. Many of these systems were on premise large scale ERP systems that was largely rooted in either the human resources or accounting departments. The shop floor, and manufacturing for that matter was only of secondary consideration.

With the Y2K panic in the late 90’s, many companies and manufacturers scrambled to find enterprise solutions to stop what could be a potentially devastating disruption to their business. Many of these systems were on premise large scale ERP systems that was largely rooted in either the human resources or accounting departments. The shop floor, and manufacturing for that matter was only of secondary consideration. However, in this new decade the roles seemed to have reversed and companies today are realizing that the most successful ERP solutions and implementations start from the ground up, or from the shop floor up to the executive floor. The limelight is now on the shop floor and accounting and human resources are the after thought. The manufacturing floor is where a company’s product or bread and butter is created. The quality, efficiency and cost of producing these products will determine the success, competitiveness and viability of the company. The main reason for deploying an ERP system to the shop floor is ironically in step with the best practices of manufacturing, but instead of quality of products, it ensures the quality of data. Quality data “products” is of as paralleled importance to a company as is its manufacturing products because highest quality data is essential to optimally manufacture the highest quality and most profitable products. Taking this point one step further, no data is infact better than erroneous or misleading data! Getting the right enterprise solution for the shop floor will ensure that employees in direct contact with the manufacturing process can use accurate information to expose manufacturing deficiencies, quality flaws, troubleshooting and traceability tools to maximize productivity. Management and employees disconnected from the manufacturing process can now get connected to help with long and short term resource planning, marketing and budget forecasting. Inventory accuracy, scrap volume, and increased production are just a few key areas that can be streamlined with shop floor ERP systems. Training costs, freight costs, and machine recipes other key benefits of ERP systems that can help companies to deliver more profitability by decreasing costs, maximizing resources, eliminating waste and creating a higher quality product. The final benefit of a ERP shop floor solution is its creation of manufacturing wide transparency. The flow of the shop floor and manufacturing operations that were previously reliant on a few key employees with the knowledge of how to best run operation by feel and with knowledge housed solely in their heads has been opened up and calibrated for virtually everyone in the organization to see, challenge, applaud and improve, all contributing to making products that are competitive in the increasingly challenging marketplace.

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