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By Tai, October 28, 2007 1:15 am

5. Advanced Planning and Scheduling

5.1. Definition

Manufacturing management process
that allocates
raw materials and production capacity
optimally
to meet demand.

5.2. APS Characteristics

How APS is different from traditional planning:

The 2 diagrams concludes: APS process is simultaneous, thus is more scalable and optimal and usually gives more accurate results.

The cycles of APS allow throughput times and inventory to be reduced.

APS is often built on finite capacity scheduling.

5.3. When to apply APS

1. Make-To-Order (as distinct from make-to-stock) manufacturing
2. Capital-intensive production processes, where plant capacity is constrained
3. Products ‘competing’ for plant capacity: where many different products are produced in each facility
4. Products that require a large number of components or manufacturing tasks
5. Production necessitates frequent schedule changes which can not be predicted before the event

5.4. APS & ERP Integration

The end result of APS: the Schedule is passed to Sales/Customer Service. Together with Orders, this Schedule is then input to ERP.

ERP Series Previous Posts

ERP Series vol 3: CRM

ERP Series vol 2: ERP System Characteristics

ERP Series vol 1: ERP Definition & Advantages

Free & Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning Software

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By Tai, September 20, 2007 1:10 am

4. Customer Relationship Management

4.1. Definition

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) consists of

1. All Customer-focus functions such as: sales, marketing, customer support
2. Software and Tools for automation of these functions
3. Processes to integrate and support the tasks and tools

4.2. CRM Typical Elements

Sales force automation

SFA tools track prospects, contacts, and activities, allowing managers to follow leads through the pipeline, forecast revenue, and catch bottlenecks. Because of the revenue-forecasting requirements, SFA has always emphasized metrics even more than other areas of CRM..

Tele-Marketing and Tele-Sales Tracking

In many ways, their requirements are closer to those of support tracking and indeed many vendors offer contact center modules that can serve both inbound and outbound contact centers.

Product configuration

Product configuration tools allow users to customize complex products to their exact requirements.

Marketing automation

Often called campaign management, marketing automation allows the design, execution, and management of campaigns. Depending on the sophistication of the tool, the campaigns may use a variety of media and include segmentation and list management capabilities. Marketing event planning is another potential component of marketing automation.

Support tracking

Support-tracking features include the ability to track the history of support requests from inception to resolution, including routing, ownership, escalations, and transfers. Another important area is the provision of a customer database to track service contracts. The contracts area is where integration with the sales system or with the accounting system may come into play.

Field service

Field service has different requirements than service that is provided from a support center, much as a telemarketing group needs different features than a field sales force. Like field sales, field service employs a mobile workforce and it has special requirements such as the management of parts and spares. Many field service tools allow users to communicate through wireless communications.

Knowledge base

Knowledge base functionality is useful in all areas of customer-focused functions. It has the ability to expose the knowledge base to the users through a variety of search capabilities, as well as the ability to support the creation and maintenance of documents.

Customer portal

Web-based customer access to the CRM system is now an absolute requirement. Customer portals and the functionality around them are sometimes called e-CRM and the subsystems are called e-sales, e-marketing, or e-support.

Analytics

One of the benefits of CRM is an improved ability to view and analyze customer-related activities. Together with Business Intelligence and KPI, Analytics function provides a very powerful tool in managing customer expectation to meet the enterprise’s objectives.

ERP Series Previous Posts

ERP Series vol 2: ERP System Characteristics

ERP Series vol 1: ERP Definition & Advantages

Free & Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning Software

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By Tai, September 16, 2007 9:39 pm

3. ERP System Characteristics

• Modular design comprising many distinct business modules such as financial, manufacturing, accounting, distribution, etc.
• Use centralized common database management system (DBMS)
• The modules are integrated and provide seamless data flow among the modules, increasing operational transparency through standard interfaces
• Flexible and offer best business practices
• Require time-consuming tailoring and configuration setups for integrating with the company’s business functions
• Modules work in real time with online and batch processing capabilities
• Internet-enabled
• Financial and business information is often generated automatically by ERP systems based on data previously entered, without further human instructions
• ERP provides business intelligence tools like Decision Support Systems, Executive Information System, Reporting, Data Mining and Easy Warning Systems for enabling people to make better decision and thus improve their business processes

ERP Series Previous Posts

ERP Series vol 1: ERP Definition & Advantages

Free & Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning Software

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By Tai, September 13, 2007 11:54 pm

1. Definition

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems are software systems for business management, encompassing modules supporting functional areas such as

• Planning
• Manufacturing
• Sales
• Marketing
• Distribution
• Accounting
• Financial
• Human Resource Management
• Project Management
• Inventory Management
• Service and Maintenance
• Transportation, logistics and e-Business

The architecture of the software facilitates transparent integration of modules, providing flow of information between all functions within the enterprise in a consistently visible manner. Corporate computing with ERPs allows companies to implement a single integrated system by replacing or re-engineering their mostly incompatible legacy information systems.

2. Advantages of ERP

ERP Series Previous Posts

Free & Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning Software