ERP Manufacturing

Manufacturing ERP Software, Flagstaff

Flagstaff, Arizona is a small city of about 60,000 people that serves as the seat of Arizona’s Coconino County. The city got its name when a scouting party from Boston put up a flagpole in the area to honor the centennial of the United States in 1876. The flagpole was made from a Ponderosa pine taken from what is now the largest contiguous pine forest in the country. That flagpole and pine forest provide an easy segue, more or less, into a discussion of manufacturing ERP software. Flagstaff was once a rich source of raw manufacturing materials related to pine forests and wood, and now is still a manufacturing and distribution hub, though the products flowing out of this urban center are now more likely to be medical devices than lumber.

This is a small city with a fairly strong background in manufacturing ERP software. Flagstaff once specialized in lumber, shipping, and ranching, and its experience with shipping, scheduling and enterprise resource management are now channeled into tourism, medical supplies, and distribution for companies like Purina and Walgreens.  With the help of manufacturing ERP software, Flagstaff small and midsized businesses are holding onto their accounts even during the current economic downturn, and start-ups stand a chance of survival here that they might not have without integrated manufacturing and distribution software platforms. 

What do manufacturing ERP software, Flagstaff and the future of small business have in common? First, a history. The earliest manufacturing ERP systems were established in order to coordinate the delivery of raw materials to shop floors and the assembly and distribution of finished products. These tasks were more difficult that they needed to be when every department in a given company conducted its functions on a separate software system from all the others. When each department handles and stores its own databases and runs its own software applications, communication and data conversion problems can occur during otherwise very simple exchanges of information. But with manufacturing ERP software in place, all departments can run applications and store data on the same shared server architecture. This can make data sharing much easier and can also increase efficiency across a company as all employees interact with the server using interfaces that have the same look and feel.

In a place like Flagstaff, small businesses would ideally gain the most from systems that are affordable and easy to maintain and support. The future of ERP software seems to be head in this direction as large system providers customize their products to court the interest of smaller businesses with restrictive budgets.  If both system providers and clients can meet in the middle, both may be able to stay ahead of the competition during challenging times.

Written by :

tracey boxer