What Process Manufacturing Challenges ERP Software will Solve?

Overview

Today, manufacturing not only relates to creating products. In fact, the whole sector has been transitioning aggressively, and this is mainly due to the ever-changing market conditions. The rising demands of consumers are pushing manufacturers to explore new insights and futuristic ways of meeting supply needs.

For many manufacturers, pandemic-induced actions like shutdown imparted long-lasting effects in a way that many companies are still struggling to get back to their pre-pandemic potential, due to decreased production & diminished revenues.

In a bid to achieve this, the companies are putting efforts to overhaul core operations with a lofty goal of increasing agility, flexibility, visibility, efficiency, etc., without compromising safety. To cope with these as well as other challenges like data management, inventory management, quality and compliance, formula management, etc., a competent ERP tool emerges as the only wise choice.

The Role of ERP in Manufacturing

Productivity can never be attained automatically, it’s a combined result of intended efforts and intelligent planning.

For businesses, ERP is an all-purpose application that helps in streamlining and automating the core operational processes for better functioning and increased productivity. While data security and real-time information are a matter of concern in manufacturing, ERP maintains a safe & secured central database that allows its users to have cross-departmental visibility that automatically improves the functioning of critical processes like finance, production, supply chain, inventory management, etc.

Without a proficient ERP tool, companies can’t sustain themselves in the long run and might fail to achieve what they want to. Hence, ERP proves to be a massive influencer by offering tremendous benefits to the organizations that deploy it. This blog takes a look at some of the major challenges that the process manufacturing businesses face, and the ERP software solves flawlessly. Continue reading.

Product Inconsistency- Formula or recipe is the core ingredient of every process manufacturing company. For a business whose finished product is the outcome of a specific formula, maintaining the consistency of this formulation is highly necessary to keep every product identical to the previous one. Also, making alterations according to the changing business needs, and saving them for future use, is of great importance.

That’s the reason why ERP software is the preferred choice for businesses. A good ERP with an intelligently-tailored formula management module allows users to create, store, and retrieve the formulas as pre-programmed recipes for future reference. Also, the version control functionality of a process manufacturing software helps in knowing every detail about the modification made in any formula, to maintain safety.

Regulatory Compliance- The process manufacturing industry is always at risk of biohazards. Hence, to protect the consumers and the environment from the effects of potentially hazardous products, businesses need to fulfill necessary regulatory requirements. At the same time, managing regulations manually can be time-consuming and prone to error.

Also, the companies violating these regulatory standards may face huge financial penalties. Thus, businesses are turning towards opting for a process manufacturing software that helps in increasing visibility, security, and traceability during the processes, and leads to achieving all the regulatory compliance.

Production Management- In manufacturing, successful execution of production tasks involves streamlining complex processes like mixing, grinding, heating, filling, etc. For this, maintaining volumes of spreadsheets and paper documents could pull you back from the competition.

This is where a competent & enterprise-ready process manufacturing software comes in with a core motive of automating the business processes. With its production management module, it controls and tracks the entire set of operations at a manufacturing unit, starting from batch creation, batch processing, and quality checking, to final closing till delivery. Additionally, manufacturers can effectively manage formula scaling along with full and partial closing of batches to meet deadlines promptly.

Inventory Management- What happens if we plan to prepare a dish and unfortunately find that we do not have enough raw material, or have expired raw material? Sounds relatable, right? This is what happens with most companies too when inventory is managed manually. Businesses experience understocking, overstocking, missed sales, uncertain cash flow, etc. Hence, performing effective inventory management for companies with large-scale production is a task of utmost importance.

In such situations, turning towards an integrated process manufacturing software can keep the businesses far away from the pitfalls of using the traditional ways, and the human errors associated with that. With efficient inward and outward inventory management, the process manufacturing software provides a real-time view of the available stock that helps to maintain the optimum level of materials all the time, making production more efficient.

Quality Control- For any customer, the foremost requirement is the product's “Quality”, and for every manufacturing company, the primary goal is to manufacture an error-free product. Specifically, the process manufacturing industry being a formula-based sector, it involves the mixing of multiple ingredients in a specific proportion. Hence, these processes are required to be done under great supervision to eliminate the possibility of any error.

For this, the Quality Control module of ERP software comes into play. It initiates an automated inspection process with set quality checks at different levels of production and also generate alerts in case any product fails to meet the set quality standards.

An ideal ERP software starts performing numerous quality checks right from receiving the raw materials uptill the delivery of the product to the customer. This ensures that quality is maintained- Every. Single. Time.

Concluding Thoughts

An efficient and competent ERP for the process manufacturing industry not only resolves these five challenges mentioned above, but provides unmatchable visibility within the business operations with increased coordination, management, and execution of the disparate core processes.

If your process manufacturing business is declining in any of the areas, and your present process manufacturing ERP software is unable to deliver desired results, then BatchMaster can assist you efficiently. Tap on the link below and get a free consultation today.