Top 5 Inventory Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Top 5 Inventory Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Days before the solar eclipse of 2017 it became nearly impossible to purchase the special glasses needed to safely observe the event. People rushing from store to store in a frenzy trying to locate the last available pair of glasses, found the stores had just not planned well… they had nothing left. It got so bad that some stores reported customers coming to blows as they fought over the remaining items. To make matters worse, Amazon and Walmart had to let customers know that the glasses they purchased might not be safe. Some brands were not made to the proper specifications and could not be trusted. Walmart reported another problem… the stock they had ordered never arrived. That should not have happened at Walmart, a store known for its amazing supply chain. They manage over 11,000 stores in 27 countries, requiring a technological tour de force that rarely lets them down. Balancing supply and demand completely overwhelmed most retail and manufacturing entities. Somehow, their systems failed them. Inventory planning and management are among the most important tasks, as this event clearly demonstrated. When not managed well, the failure can be catastrophic. Rootstock recently conducted a webinar designed to identify 5 […]

The Internet of Things Comes to Manufacturing

What that means for you now, and in the years ahead When it comes to manufacturing, IoT developments can certainly impact what you make. The use of IoT-enabled devices – everything from cars to consumer appliances to healthcare equipment – is exploding. Actually, that might be an understatement. According to a Gartner Research report published in February, “8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Total spending on endpoints and services will reach almost $2 trillion in 2017.” So, chances are pretty good that, sooner or later, the things you produce will have the ability to communicate with other things, and to share data. The application of IoT technology is spreading that quickly. But no matter what you manufacture, the Internet of Things is certainly going to change how you make it. In fact, that’s already happening. Walk around your own factory floor and you’ll see examples – large and small – of how IoT is transforming your processes, improving efficiencies, reducing downtime. That doesn’t mean your manufacturing facilities are going to run without human oversight next week or even next year. But even if […]

The Impact of the Cloud on Manufacturing

Today’s manufacturers need to be agile in order to respond quickly to dynamic markets and changing customer demands. They must implement streamlined and efficient workflows that increase the speed of deployment and provide scalability. Manufacturers know that when they become more agile, they become more competitive and successful. That’s why they have turned to the cloud. The cloud enables automation, and more automation not only makes a firm more nimble, it also leads to increased revenues through cost efficiency and new revenue streams. The cloud gives firms the ability to store large amounts of data and then access that data in real-time from anywhere, and this allows just-in-time business decisions and increased collaboration across the entire supply chain. Cloud-based ERP solutions give companies end-to-end visibility into their entire operations, resulting in greater flexibility and adaptability and ultimately, greater profits. In a 2016 survey by Inspirage, 73% of manufacturing companies responding considered it important or very important that cloud ERP software establish and scale collaboration to reduce risk and increase agility. By now, the benefits of the cloud should be old news: on-demand real-time access to data and resources, scalability, data storage, reduced costs and the ability to connect core manufacturing […]

Will US Manufacturing Growth Drive Technology Advances?

The US manufacturing sector has been enjoying some good news lately. Manufacturing in the United States grew for the sixth consecutive month in February, as reported by the Institute for Supply Management. During that same period, inventories contracted, which is proof that manufacturers know that to compete and grow, they need to be as flexible and efficient as possible. Cloud ERP is specifically designed to help manufacturers become more flexible and more efficient, and the ecosystems built around cloud ERP give these firms the end-to-end solutions they need to apply these principles to their entire organization. We believe that the continuing growth and contracting inventories will drive manufacturers to embrace cloud-based ERP ecosystems and the technology innovations that these ecosystems make possible. According to the most recent monthly executive survey from the Institute for Supply Management, the US manufacturing sector grew for the sixth consecutive month in February. The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) was 57.7% for the month, a 1.7% increase over January and the highest total since August 2014. The PMI passed the 50% threshold for manufacturing growth back in September 2016. Indexes for new orders and production also increased for the sixth consecutive month in February. New orders […]

Jan Baan Reviews: “From Legacy ERP to Smart Industry 4.0”

http://www.automation.com/automation-news/article/from-legacy-erp-to-smart-industry-40-the-pace-layered-application-strategy-model The four revolutions are: Economy 1.0:Steam Engine, Economy 2.0:Mass Production; Economy 3.0: Digital Revolution/Internet Technology; and Economy 4.0: Mobile Internet and Internet of Things. When Jan Baan writes about where we have come from to how we are going to adopt to Gartner’s suggested Pace-Layered Application Strategy Model in our software approach, we are excited to read it. After all, Baan, who is Chairman and Founder of Vanenburg Software and who established Baan Company in 1978 to became a pioneer in the ERP industry, should be able to provide a terrific overview. The article appears in one of the industry’s leading websites, Automation.com. (Bolded italics are by the blog author.) In the piece, Baan relates how, in the 80’s, “relational database technology and MRP algorithms helped us further expand our logistics systems to so-called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. In addition to planning and stocks, the financial data were linked, thereby, simplifying periodic reporting to shareholders. Therefore, the ERP solution belonged to the core systems of the company, which also has, unfortunately, led many users to feel locked into their software vendor since it is the software vendor that programmed those core algorithms.” Then, “at the beginning of this […]