ERP

Summary of ERP Application Software Modules

A description of the features and benefits for each available module in the ERP Manufacturing Software Series is provided below. By following the implementation Prerequisite shown in the Prerequisite Module Map, you can implement modules as your need them.

System Control Module

acts as the engine that integrates all ERP modules. It provides several tools for tailoring ERP to your company, and manages several key features such as complete audit trails, text messages and system security.

Inventory Control Module

is the basic building block for all other manufacturing applications, since it maintains and provides information on inventory status. This includes planning and costing information, inventory valuation and stock status information for materials used by your company. The financial impact of stockroom or warehouse activity can be immediately reflected in your general ledger.

Bill of Material Module

maintains product structure information for the materials, resources, tools and reference items used in the manufacturing of your products. It helps you manage future engineering changes by scheduling each planned change on the date on which it becomes effective. This module helps reduce the time and effort involved in maintaining product structure information.

Manufacturing Order Management Module

gives manufactures powerful on-line decision support to, enter and track manufacturing orders. By simplifying the record keeping and analysis of manufacturing orders, it helps planners take action to accomplish the manufacturing plan. With this module you can check component availability, pick material, calculate material usage variances and perform inquiries by order and item. A period review function determines item replenishment needs based on order point methods.

Product Costing Module

provides product costing information to assist you in analyzing and controlling operations. It helps ensure costs are accurately developed, and provides a flexible tool for analysis and simulation. This module supports decisions concerning projected costs, cost control, inventory valuation and product pricing. Using multiple methods of developing product costs, you can easily assess the effect of changes to material and labor costs, overhead rates, scrap and yield, and product structure.

Purchasing Module

gives purchasing agents powerful on-line decision support and simplifies record keeping, allowing buyers to focus on key purchasing activities. It handles all types of purchases including inventoried items, non-inventoried expense items, outside operations pertaining to a manufacturing order, and subcontracted items that require components being sent to the vendor. It prints purchase orders, provides follow-up recommendations and helps track receipts from inspection to the stockroom. The Purchasing Module simplifies the record keeping and analysis of buyer decisions.

Material Requirements Planning Module (MRP)

calculates and maintains an optimum manufacturing plan based on your master production schedule, sales forecasts, inventory status, open orders and bills of material. The MRP Module provides master scheduling and capacity requirements planning capabilities. By highlighting exception conditions and facilitating interactive analysis and decisions, it provides powerful decision support tools to help planners take action to accomplish the manufacturing plan.

Order Entry Module

gives customer service representatives on-line support to enter and track customer orders. Though sales order review, the customer service representative can take action on credit problems, rescheduling requirements and the timely release of orders to meet shipment dates. The Order Entry Module checks customer credit, available-to-promise and order backlogs, and produces order acknowledgments.

Shipping Module

extends the functionality of the Order Entry Module to assist in preparing, recording and tracking the shipment of customer orders. This module provides an action screen that presents orders due to ship and allows you to select specific orders. Picklists can be printed order-by-order or consolidated into a single picklist for selected orders. Automated shipping and packaging options are available when processing the actual shipment of items. You can create packing slips, box labels, bills of lading and other shipping -related documents. You can also track the shipments of customer orders by viewing order/shipment activity and printing a shipment log.

Custom Products Manufacturing Module

helps manufacturers plan and control make-to-order and engineer-to-order products. You can easily estimate and track job costs, schedule production, control inventory and purchasing, manage your job configurations and improve customer order processing. This module enables you to provide quotations and responses to customer inquiries quickly. You can promise valid delivery dates based on availability of materials and you can co-ordinate the purchasing, manufacturing and shipping activities so you can meet your premises. You can also improve production efficiency, and track cost and scheduled performance.

Repetitive Manufacturing Module

extends ERP functionality to support repetitive manufacturers needs for material scheduling and control with minimal paperwork flows. It helps perform production scheduling by rate, tracks inventory transferred to floor stock locations, and handles backflushing (or postdeduction) of components in floor stock inventory based on parent completion. User selectable backflushing methods ensure that the appropriate floor stock locations are used for postdeduction of inventory , and prededuction methods can be used on selected items for tighter issue control. the methods apply equally well to discrete manufacturers that bulk issue some components and consume the floor stock upon parent completion.

Co-Products Manufacturing Module

extends the functionality of ERP so that co-products can be managed for scheduling and costing purposes. Co-Products scheduling and costing purposes. Co-product scheduling and costing is critical when manufacturing processes require refining, grading or sorting of products; when products of one process are used in other processes or products; and when an item is disassembled, salvaged or cut. These processes involving co-products are common to many manufacturers, including integrated circuit chip makers, meat cutters, petroleum refineries and lumber mills.

General Ledger Module

is completely integrated with the other modules in the ERP system so that financial transactions are automatically created as a result of business activities occurring in other modules. This module provides a comprehensive analysis of your company’s financial position and generates your financial reports. In addition, a report writer capability gives you tremendous flexibility in designing you own financial reports.

Accounts Payable Module

handles processing of supplier invoices from invoice entry and payment approval to check printing and reconciliation. It support decisions concerning when to pay, what amount to pay, whether to challenge an invoice total and whether to take cash discounts. Use of the Accounts Payable Module reduces the time to process payables and results in timely payment of vendor invoices to maximize advantages of cash discounts.

Accounts Receivable and Invoicing Module

processes customer invoices and payments, and tracks current and aged receivables by the balance-forward or open-item method. It supports decisions about service charges, resolution of billing questions and follow-up on delinquent or problem accounts. Use of the Accounts Receivable and Invoicing Module results in greater accuracy in processing invoices and payments, timely release of customer statements, improved handling of customer account inquiries, cash discounting and better customer collection procedures.

Payroll Connection Module

allows you to transfer payroll transactions to the general ledger by providing an interface between the ERP General Ledger and the ADP PC/Payroll service. ADP-PC/Payroll handles both hourly and salaried employees on daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semimonthly and quarterly pay frequencies. You maintain your payroll information with the ADP service and, at the close of each pay period, the Payroll Connection Module transfers the payroll data from ADP and generates a general ledger journal entry. Use of this module increases the timeliness and accuracy of the general ledger by reducing the time spent manually entering payroll information.

Management Reports Module

provides several reports which extend the capability of ERP to support materials management, including the inventory control, production control and purchasing functions. These reports help classify and value inventory, measure and maintain inventory accuracy, identify order variances and analyze schedule and vendor performance.

CIM Data Export Module

makes it easy to extract data from the ERP data base for subsequent analysis and report generation by decision support tools such as spreadsheets, data managers and graphics packages. You define a data view of desired information and then extract a file of information corresponding to the data view. The extract files can be \manipulated using the decision support tool of your choice to produce reports generate graphics and perform simulations. This module facilitates use of multiple decision support tools so that you can use the tool that fits your needs and experience.

CIM Data Import Module

makes it easy to input information into ERP in a batch mode just as if you entered the data on-line from a keyboard. With the CIM Data Import Module, you can easily define an input data format. ERP uses this input format to translate incoming data and update the ERP data base. This module facilitates conversion from another system to ERP during the installation process. It also allows you to perform global maintenance and batch updates on the ERP data base. ERP can now be interfaced to other systems such as AutoCAd, along with bar code readers, for example, for automatic real-time updates. This module also assists in data base recovery.

CIM Csustomizer Module

provides a seamless interface between ERP and external applications, ranging from commercially available packages to user - developed custom code. You can access external applications directly or through and intervening, user-definable menu. Data can be passed to, and entered from, external applications. The CIM Customizer Module is also the basis for on-line data retrievals and user-designed external documents.

Windows Library

extends the decision support functionality of ERP. This module automatically assigns order numbers and generates custom documents and bar coded stocking labels.

Shop Floor Tracking and Reporting

provides interactive tools for planning and controlling production activity, and extends the shop floor control functions currently in ERP. Using information about workcenters, routings and workcenter loads established in other ERP modules, this module helps you plan capacity, perform dispatching, track order status and costs, follow up on material shortages and generate shop paperwork.

Approved Vendor Sourcing

provides interactive access to information about approved vendors and quotations when creating purchase orders, extending the other purchasing functions in ERP. As one of the Windowing Applications, this module is used to maintain approved vendor lists for purchases items, information about quotations and the relationships between manufacturers and distributors in a two-tier distribution channel environment. This module uses data pertaining to vendors and items extracted by the CIM data Export Module. Supplemental information, maintained in a separate data base, involves approved vendors and vendor items, manufacturers and authorized distributors, and quotations for vendor items.

Advanced Price Book

provides interactive access to price information when entering customer orders and extends ERP’s other order entry functions. As one of the windowing Applications, this module is used to define price books, items contained in each price books to customers. With interactive access to relevant price information, you can provide more effective customer service during order entry. This module uses customer and item data to extract and maintain a separate data base for the price book master, the contents of each price book, and the assignments of price books to customers. You can define and assign price books appropriate to your marketing starategy.

Multi-User Local Area Network Module (Lan)

allows many users to access and update ERP simultaneously. With the local area network, each user has simultaneously. With the local area network, each user has access top current information, workstations can be added as needed and the system maintains data base integrity. This module provides the basis for additional factory and office automation applications, and users can easily perform tasks in a stand alone or network mode.

Lot Trace/Serialization Module

provides upward and downward genealogy/lot tracking, direct pepgging by lot number, order number or serial number. It also provides historical data management, FIFO inventory control information and the ability to track information specific to a lot such as expiration and re-test dates and potency information. The serialization functions include the ability to record and report serial numbers of items shipped.

Executive Information System Module

helps executives manage and monitor their business for improved cash and profits. This module provides decision makers with a simple and powerful tool that obtains, analyzes and displays a snapshot of the state of the business. It does this by accessing a variety of business information sources, extracting the desired data, consolidating the data into key business indicators and presenting these indicators in an easy-to-use, icon-driven environment. EIS can be programed to automatically update these snapshots of the business as often as desired and warn of potential trouble.

Operations Performance Module

helps managers achieve their business goals by providing them with a staraight forward approach to monitoring and fine-tuning their ERP system by tracking the “Magnificent Eight” criteria - factors crucial for effective system communications. These factors include inventory accuracy, bill of material accuracy, lead times assigned, planned shipments not past due and released orders scheduled when needed. In addition, this module provides a tool for managing the parameters used for setting production schedules.

Material Management/ Analysis Module

extends the functionality of the Bill of Material and Inventory Control modules. The module includes a series of screens and report required by engineering, configuration control, and manufacturing personnel to analyze the impact of evolving bills of material. This module also includes tools to help reduce product lead times and associated inventory manage engineering changes, track product revisions, and minimize phase-out costs.