ERP Services

How do you deliver the right product to the right place, at the right time and at the right price? It's an ever more pressing concern, given the complex challenges posed by globalization, technological advances, legislative changes, infrastructure changes, labor mobility, and more sophisticated and demanding customers.

HollyPoint Consulting can help you manage costs, improve performance and integrate your processes with your suppliers to increase collaboration. We can create solutions for all your supply chain challenges:

Key Benefits

In today's economy, transforming your supply chain processes is more important than ever. We'll help you reduce costs, inventory and shortages; and improve responsiveness and delivery.

By extending enterprise resource planning (ERP) to collaborate with outside suppliers, distributors and customers, you can build an e-business supply chain. This allows you to reduce excess inventory, fixed assets and working capital, while improving just-in-time delivery.

Are you looking for a way to more efficiently manage your equipment, staff and facilities? We can assess your current processes, evaluate your needs and recommend the right integrated solutions for your business.

How can you increase efficiency, reduce your inventory and streamline operations? From product warehouses to data storehouses, our experts can address all issues regarding logistics and distribution.

Does your organization have disparate applications, systems and procedures for sourcing, negotiation, procurement, fulfillment and payment? Our procurement services result in a streamlined process -- from automated purchasing to a seamless tracking system.

Capabilities

We specialize in customized ERP systems. Each manufacturing process is different enough that one package cannot cover all of the special needs necessary to improve productivity or justify the enormous investment in an ERP system. Therefore, we like to believe that we can offer a custom package at an affordable price that will allow a site to improve its productivity as well as offer enhanced capabilities not only to itself but to its customers as well.

The following sections represent major capabilities that we have developed and written over many projects. We have found these following principles to be important in any ERP system.

User-interfaces

User interfaces can make or break any software application. Even the easiest application can seem impossible and too complex for the savviest users when the user-interface isn't simple. It is important to make the user-interface intuitive and easy-to-use. The best user-interfaces require little or no training. Although, these are hard to find, this is a goal we strive for.

Standard costing and any related accounting

The primary objective of an inventory system is to accurately track materials, both inputs and outputs, in order to effectively forecast and track costs. It is important that any application system uses a sound methodology to track the costs of production of items.

There are certain basic aspects of the accounting methodology used in order to understand how any system tracks costs. In order to accurately forecast the total cost of an Item, it is necessary to break that total cost into distinct groups. A good system achieves this by dividing the cost into material costs and non-material costs. In different situations, this information will be inadequate to accurately predict costs due to factors that change, such as variable efficiencies of production lines and machines. The system must also be able to adjust for changes in other factors, such as changing costs of raw materials and labor costs, as they occur without affecting cost calculations on previously manufactured goods.

A good system uses a type of hierarchal system to track costs.  At the top are the Standard cost groups that represent the total costs of particular Items.  Below this is the Bill of Materials (BOMs) that represents the costs of materials that are consumed to manufacture an Item. In conjunction with the BOMs are the Routing costs. Routings represent the costs of non-materials, such as labor, electricity, maintenance and other operational costs, associated with the manufacturing of Items.  These Routings are calculated to represent the cost of producing a Unit of Measure of the Item and therefore represent what may appear to be very small monetary amounts, but when extrapolated out to the quantities produced, amount to a significant monetary outlay.

Factors influencing costs are the various efficiencies of the machines utilized to produce different Items.  Due to a variety factors, different machines may be able to produce the same Item for different costs and rates.  Depending on production requirements one machine may be selected over the other and the system must calculate the cost of using that particular machine. 

Scheduling

Once orders have been taken from a customer, the next step in the manufacturing process is to schedule production of Items associated with a sales order. We have setup services to automatically generate work orders (or manufacturing orders) for the line items in a sales order, but at times it may be necessary to alter these or to create special work orders.  In either case, we have implemented functions that allow the user to accomplish either task. This portion of the system also allows the user, depending on privileges assigned, to approve and disapprove line items for production, as well as change the status of line items.

Transaction transfer or communication to another system

As a system accumulates information from the manufacturing process, it may be necessary to transfer this information to another database. This could be a financial application or just a legacy database. Although this function can be done instantaneously, it could also be done to occur at intervals.  The user can specify the amount of time to be encompassed by these intervals when the transfer is prepared. The records that are included in this time interval are transferred as a group, or batch. It is important to note that once data has been transferred, it is flagged and cannot transferred again.  In this way, duplicate records are prevented.  Depending on the type of information that is to be transferred, the user can select different transfers.  For example, for transfers to the general ledger, the user specifies the GL transfer, while the AP transfer is utilized for accounts payable transfers and AR transfers are utilized for accounts receivable transfers.

Whatever the case may be, this occurs in almost every project and can be handled with due care and caution.

Inventory control

An inventory system is the central component of any ERP system. The main function of an inventory system is to track items. Items represent any material that is used or produced in the manufacturing process. The inventory system contains all items that are currently inventoried and a history of all items that have been inventoried. Because of this, an inventory system will usually contain the largest tables and the most data. It primarily serves as the nerve center for all of the other application modules (i.e. Manufacturing, Purchasing, Shipping, etc.). The most important aspect of an inventory system is having it give you the information you want. It may be simple to input inventory into it, however, if you can't figure out how to retrieve the information you want in a readable and concise manner, the system is effectively useless.

Label printing (bar codes)

Labels can be one of the more important pieces of any inventory tracking system. It allows you to individually track a particular unit (or lot). In today's marketplace, it is evermore critical that you be able to track that unit quickly and simply. This can be done by bar-coding. It should also be noted that more and more customers demand specific labels for themselves. For example, a customer may want to print their own particular part number on the label to expedite their own receiving process. Therefore, it would be necessary to track, not only your part number, but theirs as well.

Shipping/Receiving

The goal of shipping is to automate the process of shipping an order. An order is taken, processed, manufactured, and then is ready for release so that the order can be shipped. An order does not have to be totally completed to be available for shipment. For instance, an order can be very large and therefore valuable warehouse space could be wasted waiting for the balance of the order to be completed. So that valuable warehouse space can be made available, part of the order can be shipped while the remainder of the order is still being manufactured. This could mean that just one line item of an order be shipped or even just part of one line item. Another example would be where a portion of an order is critical to the customer. This portion could be shipped as soon as it is completed while the remainder of the order is still being manufactured. We can allow the user to prepare shipments based on invoices and the line items contained within those invoices.

Manufacturing tracking

One of the purposes of an ERP system is to track inventory of items and materials as they relate to the manufacturing process.  All other portions of the system support the manufacturing process. For example, sales orders generate work orders for the manufacturing process.  Also, invoices track the disposition of items created by the manufacturing process. As a result of these relationships, the manufacturing module is closely related to almost all other modules.  Since manufacturing should be accessible to so many users though, it is necessarily simple.

Manufacturing should record input and output information related to machines in the manufacturing process. The amount of data recorded here should be at an absolute minimum (to maximize throughput). For each output created, the input that went in to each are recorded as well. It also records quantities that were consumed as well as produced.

Bill of Materials

In order for an ERP system to maintain an accurate inventory, it is necessary to have an up to date listing of materials that are used to manufacture different items.  This listing is referred to as the Bill of Materials (BOM).  It represents a list of the items that are tracked and are utilized in the production of an item. The BOM also allows the user to create records of materials utilized and calculate the quantities of items used in production.

Bill of Materials represents the recipe (if you will) of what items and how much of each go into making another item.

Quality control

During manufacturing, it is necessary to determine if products being produced meet the minimum requirements needed by the customer.  In order to accomplish this, quality assurance tests are performed on products during the manufacturing process. In situations where a customer has not established a specification for a product, then the manufacturer will usually have a specification in place. In this way the manufacturer can insure a quality product is being produced.

Purchasing

When trying to accurately maintain an inventory system, it is necessary to not only account for the final output of manufacturing, but also account for input items as well.  In addition, it is also necessary, as part of sound accounting principles, to account for all purchases in some manner.  To accomplish this, an ERP system should include a purchasing module.  By doing this, the user can accurately track usages and inputs, thereby enabling better allocation of resources and funds.  In turn, this increases productivity and results in a better product.

Order entry

The goal here is to be able to take an order, process it, pass it along to planning, and then to print an acknowledgement that can then be sent back to the customer confirming their order (if necessary).

Multi-lingual

With an ever-growing global economy, companies have offices spread all over the world. Many companies want to standardize on certain applications. This makes multi-lingual software more important than ever. We here at HollyPoint Consulting have experience in developing multi-lingual packages. For example, we have developed applications that can support as many Latin-based languages as you want.