by: Jordan Wolfrum, Implementation Consultant

  Are you taking full advantage of your talented staff?

During a recent visit to a new client site, I met a brilliant young IT specialist. We discussed, at length, her role with the company. The woman described to me that on any given day she spent hours tracking, scheduling, and recording receipts of purchase orders and the shipment of sales orders. She had developed a series of complex reports in Access and Excel that she managed and updated daily. As purchase orders were scheduled, she updated the schedule report. Prior to the deliver, she generated and printed the necessary documentation. After the inventory was received, she printed labels. Then she called the dock workers to do the labeling. Then she recorded the inventory transactions and updated more reports. Essentially, this bright mind spent the majority of each day preparing for and tracking inventory going in and out of the warehouse. In talking with her, it was obvious that she was capable of much more. We discussed the analysis of freight costs, vendor timeliness, and order accuracy that she would be doing if she only had the time.  During our discussion, she actually had to leave because a truck had arrived and the dock workers couldn’t proceed without her printing their paperwork.

Finally, I asked why the shipping and receiving dock departments were not printing their own reports and labels, and why they were not recording deliveries and shipments. Her answer was, “That’s how we have always done it.” We discussed options for the dock workers including adding printers and hand held scanners to the dock where they could be accessed by the shipping and receiving department. I demonstrated uncomplicated transaction screens and simple process flows that would allow the dock to accomplish their own tasks without them needing to learn much about the new system. With some training, it was determined that these responsibilities could be taken off her plate freeing her time to study data and build much needed reports. In addition, the change allowed inventory to be received and transacted closer to the source resulting in more accurate inventory tracking.  The potential value added to this company by shifting responsibilities is akin to hiring a new, talented data analysis specialist with the bonus of increasing visibility to real time inventory transactions.

Take a moment to consider what brilliant minds and talented employees you have buried in tasks that could be handled more effectively or closer to the source. A fresh perspective and the courage to do things in a way that is different from “how we have always done it” paid off two-fold for this client.

by: Jake Halverson, Business Development

Growing Companies Need Better Inventory Control Methods

On a daily basis I speak with small, growing companies who are managing their manufacturing with spreadsheets. Increasing their lot control and inventory management is always one of the main issues they face with the manual systems they are currently using. These companies typically have someone going through their warehouse with a clipboard; keeping track of the information by hand is far from ideal for them because they have outgrown this method of “inventory management.”

Without using a real-time ERP system for inventory management and lot control, how can a company ever know what really needs to be produced, or how much of a specific product is on-hand at any given time? Data entry errors or duplicate data entry are also issues that these companies all seem to be facing,  and they face a lot of difficulty tracking their batches back to the source because they are not running software that is visible throughout their business.

 Manufacturing companies often waste countless hours each week with their manual systems. Time and resources are essentially lost along with expiring or nearly expired products. Lot tracking issues also lead to many FDA recall issues because the paper trail can be a tedious way to try and find where the problematic batch or batches may have originated – especially when they only have hours to show proof that the specific lot has been quarantined. The only real way to have accurate inventory management is to correctly implement and use a real-time, industry specific ERP solution.

Pedigree Tracking – IT Solutions to Make Life Easier

The Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 (PDMA) requires drug distributors to provide documentation of the chain of custody of drug products, a.k.a. pedigree tracking, throughout the distribution system.

The tracing of every entity that has handled a drug since leaving the manufacturing plant can be done on paper, however this approach is subject to errors and forgery, but most of all it does not create the safeguard that the FDA intended with this Act. The FDA favors Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for track-and-trace applications. The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages designed specifically for these highly-regulated industries contain all the tracing tools needed to comply with FDA regulations. 

The automated warehouse solution (AWS) of a fully-integrated ERP is considered the “Cadillac” system for pedigree tracking. AWS operating on a radio frequency backbone provides real-time inventory transactions. Labels are printed for all items so that inventory can be scanned with a hand-held scanning device. The labels include the item number, lot number, receipt date, and expiration date. AWS is able to search and obtain critical information about any item. Inventory items can be issued, received, or transferred without manual entry. An AWS is also a tool for paperless physical inventory and cycle counts.

When an AWS functions synonymously with an ERP, sales orders can be selected without printing sales order pick tickets. Materials, labor, and finished good quantities can be posted to the batch ticket. On the purchasing side, a product can be received from a purchase order without paper. A real-time bar coding solution has the added bonus of increasing inventory accuracy with the tracking of all movement of inventory items. Also, dual entry is no longer necessary, thus reducing the number of potential manual errors.

AWS, as part of an integrated ERP, gives pharmaceutical manufacturers the most complete manufacturing and tracing system necessary to uphold the integrity of their products as well as take the lead in establishing the requirements for the FDA pedigree tracking ruling that affects all parties in the pharmaceutical distribution chain.

Read more about Pedigree Tracking and the functions of ERP software in this White Paper.

You know you’ve got it right when independent ERP analysts are giving the same advice as we do.  Michael Koploy, ERP Analyst with SoftwareAdvice.com and Warehouse Management Systems Guide, stresses the importance of more visibility and less silos as the secret sauce for leading supply chain leaders.  A recent survey by Capgemini reported that 45 percent of the respondents prioritized supply chain visibility at the top of their improvement initiative list.

Read Michael’s Bog and read our whitepaper on “Six Manufacturing Challenges Overcome with an Integrated ERP” to get a head start on optimizing your operational efficiencies in 2012.

By:  Chuck Theisen

Little “mrp”, MRP II (e.g. Big “MRP”), ERP, Supply Chain Management, as well as associated approaches such as JIT, TOC, Lean Manufacturing, and others all, in one way or another, address the common operations issue of efficiently managing materials. Management of inventory has been, and continues to be, a major business driver in implementing integrated business systems such as ERP and Supply Chain Management.

How do we better manage our inventories?  The basic tenet in improving inventory management processes, and therefore directly impacting materials decisions, is increased visibility of our inventory position.  Increased visibility of our inventory position is driven by timeliness and accuracy in all inventory transactions.  Lack of timeliness in inventory transactions is typically a reflection of “lag” time in those transactions.  Lag time is defined as the elapsed time between the physical activity (e.g. move, consumption, etc.) of the inventory and when the business system transaction reflecting that activity updates the database.    Lack of accuracy is usually a result of missing inventory information (e.g. item numbers, unit of measure, lot numbers, location ID’s etc.), lack of training for personnel, or personnel misunderstanding of management’s priority for accuracy in the transaction process. 

Lag time issues can be addressed by streamlining the transaction process, using tools such as bar code, RFID, or similar systems, and ensuring the transaction is processed at the point of the physical activity.  Accuracy issues can be addressed by proper training, and ensuring all required information and tools are available and accessible to the people doing the transaction. 

Remember, ultimately we must have accuracy at whatever level of granularity applies to my environment (e.g. item, lot, warehouse, location).  Any misrepresented granular count record can directly affect planning and consequently effect purchasing and manufacturing. This can cause us to have too much of some items and not enough of the needed items.  Also material management costs will be higher, based upon the need for extra counts, inventory moves and handling, etc.  To minimize these costs, and improve customer service, the organization needs accurate, timely inventory information. 

by: Rebecca Kempenich 

Are you interested in improving operational efficiencies while reducing cost and increasing customer satisfaction? We are and we are talking about it. Welcome to the ProcessPro Software Blog. We launched this blog to provide the process manufacturing community a resource to turn to find industry-related information, especially in the following areas: 

• Industry Best Practices in:
  ·     inventory management
  ·     customer fulfillment
  ·     distribution
  ·     materials management
  ·     transportation
  ·     warehousing
  ·     supply chain management
  ·     purchasing
  ·     planning & scheduling

• ERP Software Selection
• Software Technology & Architecture
• Implementing ERP
• FDA Compliance
• ProcessPro ERP Software FAQ

Weekly postings from our blog authors and industry experts will provide many ideas, opinions and discussion on how to improve your manufacturing business across the entire enterprise. Join the discussion. Tell us about the topics you are interested in. Post a comment below.