Inventory Postponement to Unlock the Secrets of Profitability
Continue reading " Inventory Postponement to Unlock the Secrets of Profitability " »
Infosys’ blog on industry solutions, trends, business process transformation and global implementation in Oracle.
January 1, 2012
December 13, 2011
OPM & Outside Processing: When will they meet??
R12 was a major release for OPM in the sense it merges process inventory with discrete inventory which resulted into streamlining of inventory operations & better integration with Order Management, Purchasing etc. Another change was the introduction of SLA for OPM, which finally hit the nail in coffin for much criticized MAC module. Afterwards, there are lots of enhancements like Multi-batch operations, Make-to-Order Functionality, Landed cost management etc. We now even have validated integration between 3rd party Regulatory document generation partners and OPM Regulatory Management. But, something was still missing. Something that process manufacturer is demanding from Oracle from long time??
Continue reading " OPM & Outside Processing: When will they meet?? " »
October 5, 2011
Impediments to supply chain integration: An SME perspective
Guest post by
Kamaljeet Singh Bhatia, Lead Consultant, Infosys
The last few decades has witnessed numerous examples of significant competitive advantages through supply chain integration. Information sharing through superior technology is making enterprises capable to innovate and integrate in the complex networked environment. However information integration in supply chains is limited to large enterprises and small to medium scale enterprises (SME's) significantly lag to leverage technology for supply chain integration.
Continue reading " Impediments to supply chain integration: An SME perspective " »
Automobile Logistics: Demand to Deliver (D2D)
Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Infosys
Automobile sector is currently experiencing a turbulent transition. Apart from product innovation, manufacturers need to align their supply chain processes to meet rapidly changing customer expectations.
Logistics plays a crucial role in automotive industry, representing about 40% of the retail price of a passenger car. Historically the automotive industry has always been focused on just-in-time manufacturing (JIT) which demands for sequenced deliveries. Inbound operational planning is expected to support advanced features like milk runs, direct delivery and cross-dock optimization with drop-trailer capabilities.
Continue reading " Automobile Logistics: Demand to Deliver (D2D) " »
August 8, 2011
Traits of a Green Supply Chain
There are certain attributes of a supply chain based on which the supply chain practices can be designated as Green Supply Chain. This blog is a result of the analysis of green supply chain initiatives of various companies. The blog describes the various innovative steps and business processes which are helping companies to have more aware and environmental friendly operations amd processes, making it more sustainable. These practices and steps indicates the traits of a supply chain being green and environmental friendly.
July 19, 2011
Centralized Procurement with Oracle Fusion
Introduction
With the business expanding across globes and with manufacturing organizations resorting to sub-contracting, there is a need for organizations to look at procurement beyond their current markets. This introduces the need for a centralized procurement function for better purchasing efficiency, better control over organization spend, and central and simpler management of contracts with suppliers. Oracle Fusion Procurement introduces new and better features that aid organizations to better manage their procurement functions. The following are the advantages of a centralized procurement function:
- Better control over organization spend
- Consolidated purchasing across business units
- Leverage volume discounts by consolidated demand
- Better supplier relationship management
- Single point of contact in buying organization for supplier
- Centralized contracts - easier implementation and better management
- Consolidated measurement of supplier performance
- Reduced overheads
Continue reading " Centralized Procurement with Oracle Fusion " »
July 5, 2011
Landed cost for process industries - An Oracle solution
Look at the mirror directly or through spectacles, you are most probably seeing through it or seeing just the glass. Look deep into it - In all chance it contains sand from Australia, soda ash from China, both processed in Taiwan, manufactured in India using Italian machinery and recipe combination verified in American Laboratories. Each of these processes adds cost towards freight, storage, taxes and duty. Some part of the money you paid was actually for these. As a user you need not know the profitability and margins. But for the manufacturer this is of utmost importance. Normally the landed cost charges are applied to different items based on weight, volume and quantity.
Continue reading " Landed cost for process industries - An Oracle solution " »
May 19, 2011
Seiban Manufacturing - Enable Trackability in your Supply Chain!
Continuing on the ETO Series, I will discuss about the concept of Seiban, How it works and the key business requirements in Build To Order (BTO) Industry that can be handled in Oracle EBS Seiban solution. Another prominent ERP product that addresses Seiban requirements in the Industry is Glovia from Fujitsu.
Continue reading " Seiban Manufacturing - Enable Trackability in your Supply Chain! " »
May 4, 2011
Manufacturing Outsourcing - Let IT open the door for Collaboration
Continue reading " Manufacturing Outsourcing - Let IT open the door for Collaboration " »
February 23, 2011
The Business Context behind Outsourced Production
In recent years, OEMs have faced pressures from all directions to evolve innovative business models. Let us talk about some such challenges that relate to subcontracting:
Continue reading " The Business Context behind Outsourced Production " »
February 22, 2011
Integrated Operations and Services Planning
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February 21, 2011
Supply Chain Planning and Logistics integration
There was a time, not so long ago, when various business functions within the enterprises used to function in silos and that was still ok. Simply because that was the norm of the day. Not any more though. In today's competitive environment, managers are continuously looking for avenues to cut costs without compromising service.
Unless the functions in the enterprise collaborate, those objectives are highly likely to fall flat on their face. It is like building a tunnel. If two teams start digging from either side of the mountain without working with each other, the probability of them finding each other half way down is pretty low. What the enterprises need in such situations are systems and processes which work across the functions to recommend what's in the best interests of the enterprise. Availability of better systems is a big enabler in this aspect.
Continue reading " Supply Chain Planning and Logistics integration " »
February 20, 2011
The Post-Mass Production Era - Time for Carbon Emission Reduction
There is an 'inconvenient truth' about the way mass producers run their businesses, they over produce with their oversize production facilities that guzzle energy and resources and their inability to respond to changes quickly, wrecks havoc in the entire supply chain, in the economy, and in the environment. To wit, imagine a shipload of products suddenly stops selling as an unexpected collapse of a financial behemoth makes consumers nervous, train load of products that consumers do not want - the scourge of excess and wastes is not limited to the balance sheets alone- it impacts us all, our surroundings, our planet - when there isn't enough energy till we find an alternate source, when CO2 levels are at a point where we don't know what will happen. When sources of greenhouse gases were analyzed, it was found that developed countries were the most polluters and manufacturing industries accounted for an estimated 40 percent of total CO2 emissions. Until now no price tag has been attached for emitting green house gasses (GHG).Time has come that manufacturers need to pay for 'Environmental and social' cost of their actions, besides their internal cost of production such as cost of fuel, labor, material etc
Continue reading " The Post-Mass Production Era - Time for Carbon Emission Reduction " »
February 18, 2011
Generic Vs Specialty ERP Products for Engineer To Order Industry - What Oracle can deliver for this Industry?
Engineer To Order (ETO) Manufacturers typically make complex products with longer lead time whose customer specifications require unique engineering design, significant customization or new purchased materials. Each customer order may result in a unique set of part numbers, bills of material & routings and each order needs to be tracked as a project throughout the Sales, Engineering, Manufacturing, Shipping, Installation and Service life cycle. This industry typically comprises of customers in Aerospace, Defense, Construction, Tool and Industrial equipment manufacturers etc.
February 17, 2011
GST: The supply chain and Logistics angle
Guest post by
Nipun Lakhotia, Consultant, Oracle Practice, Enterprise Solutions, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Supply chains are generally designed to optimize resources and provide better customer service. But in India, supply chain design decisions are mostly driven by financial considerations - especially tax implications. Let me explain this in detail.
In India, interstate sale of goods attracts central sale tax (CST), in addition to local sales tax (VAT). Due to this dual taxation, manufacturers tend to open several small warehouses in each state and perform simple stock transfer between their manufacturing plant & these warehouses. In this process, they save on CST and only pay local tax while making sale to the end customer. Hence tax implications over shadows classic principles of warehouse design like location, capacity, storage, transportation cost etc.
Continue reading " GST: The supply chain and Logistics angle " »
February 11, 2011
Advance Planning Command Center - An Executive Approach for Planning Decision
APCC is an executive decision making tool for Planning and recently introduced in market by Oracle. APCC stands for Advance Planning Command Center. APCC is business intelligence-analytical tool and product is based on Oracle Business Intelligence - Enterprise Edition (OBIEE). It provides unified user interface for user analysis in form of Graph and Reports.
Continue reading " Advance Planning Command Center - An Executive Approach for Planning Decision " »
February 10, 2011
Who holds the key to success in ERP led business transformation programs
Many analysis has been done and many artifacts written about the success of the ERP projects but the question which primarily remains unanswered and less explored is who holds the key to success of the program.
Continue reading " Who holds the key to success in ERP led business transformation programs " »
February 7, 2011
Oracle Production Scheduling-Shop Floor Mantra to Success
Production Scheduling is oracle's latest tool for Shop Floor Operations / Resources Scheduling optimization. It's a standalone application and can be integrated very easily with manufacturing planning and execution systems. Production Scheduling can be integrated with Demand Management (Demantra) and Oracle APS to leverage best planning / Manufacturing & Scheduling outcome. This tool is highly used in environment where Production Volumes are high or Production constraints are higher because of its capability to perform constraint based scheduling. Key strength of Production Scheduling is it's User interface which can show multiple views together in one screen and help user making the decision process and identifying bottleneck resources if any.
Continue reading " Oracle Production Scheduling-Shop Floor Mantra to Success " »
February 1, 2011
The Post-Mass Production Era
This is not so much about the decline of mass production, as about the paradigm shift taking place in manufacturing around the world. Old system of manufacturing seems misfit to the current economic, political and environmental conditions. No new idea springs from void. Changes and even sea changes happen gradually. Craft Production System of late 1800 gave way to mass production when Henry Ford introduced Model T in early '90s. What Ford could achieve was not only the continuous flow of production, but also the standardization and interchangeability of the parts. What mass production system lacks, however, is a necessary responsiveness to ever changing consumer demands. Thanks to Oil shocks of 70s, Sep'11, Financial Meltdowns, demand volatility casts a shadow of mass destruction in profitability --- enterprises of all sizes across the industry vertical are struggling to remain competitive in the choppy market place.
December 29, 2010
Creating Quality supply chain !
In Simple terms, Quality is nothing but attaining excellence in what we do, being it manufacturing or in service industries.
We all be hearing these words regarding the Product quality as
"Yesterday was customer's need, Today is Customer's Satisfaction, and Tomorrow will be Customer's Expectations."
That mean each and every product or the material going out of the industries or coming in should have excellent quality standards so that the finished good is of best quality . Because Deficient incoming raw material will affect the final product and spoil the product name in the market. So in today's scenario following quality only at Manufacturing Plant level is not sufficient , but also training the Vendors (Suppliers) regarding quality procedures , Complying with quality standards is must .
For example, we are running Casting industry and supplied with raw aluminum ingots from our vendor. You trust the Vendor and use the ingots in production. The result may be Complaints from Customers about defective castings. Why is it so? What happened suddenly?
December 27, 2010
MES for Process Industries
What is MES ?
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) acts as central repository for all the data transacted, but there is no way of controlling the operations or passing the information between plant control system & ERP in integrated manner.
MES (Manufacturing execution systems) help in detailing the process and also controlling the operations through the systems. MES uses the data and provide results on the plant activities in minimal time. MES Collects the data from plant system, store them, and the output are used to control the functions in enhancing productivity and process on the whole.
MES for Oracle Process Manufacturing (OPM):
MES for Process Manufacturing adds new batch execution functionality and increases usability for manufacturing operators.
December 5, 2010
Intercompany Transactions in a Global ERP Environment
The mantra today is best cost manufacturing rather than "low cost" manufacturing. The idea is to serve the customer at the best cost from best possible location. Most such corporations are deploying or have already deployed some form of ERP solution to manage intercompany transactions in the most efficient way in their ERP systems.
Continue reading " Intercompany Transactions in a Global ERP Environment " »
November 8, 2010
Looking for the most cost-effective and complete content management platform? Use Oracle Content Management
In today's scenario, organizations are facing many problems in managing content with nearly 80% of the unstructured information, lots of content duplication and spending around 15-20% of the operating revenue in fixing problems that arouse from inappropriate data.
To maximize content management efficiency, improve security and reduce costs, organizations need a comprehensive enterprise content management solution that fits easily with their business processes. Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g meets these demands delivering the high performance and scalability required to face the challenging enterprise content management environments.
November 6, 2010
Consignment Pull Operations For Lean Supply Chain
Consignment operations at a typical HTDM organization form an integral part of the sales process. It is a strategic operation both from volume and revenue standpoint.
Continue reading " Consignment Pull Operations For Lean Supply Chain " »
October 25, 2010
Dynamics Of HTDM In Asian Markets
Responsive supply chains are no more just a jargon. More and more organizations are adopting this route in order to stay competitive in this era of globalization. Last few years have seen economic downturn and thereby a trend of consolidations. There have been many a mergers and acquisitions.
September 15, 2010
Are your company's sales and operations planning, demand management and operational planning processes integrated?
Strategic Sourcing - Leverage Supplier relationship for cost effective procurement
Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value?
Continue reading " Is IT an 'enabler' or 'creator' of Business Value? " »
September 3, 2010
Are you able to objectively and quantitatively measure the performance of your entire Demand to Deliver Value Chain in a holistic manner?
In a traditional manufacturing enterprise, the supply chain works in a piecemeal way through multiple departments executing their own functions and tracking their own performance. Most package-based IT solutions also accordingly adopt a siloed view of the business and provide disparate modules/ applications for different business functions. Thus measurement of overall process performance becomes tedious as end-to-end Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are not defined, benchmarked and measured, leading to dilution of process-level accountability and view, leading to dissatisfied customers and suppliers.
September 2, 2010
Critical points to be consider while "Asset Group" Design process for Successful eAM implementation
August 31, 2010
Managing your engineering changes in a multi divisional Oracle Global single instance environment
Have you ever wondered how you would manage your engineering changes in a single instance multi divisional environment? You are using Inventory, Bill of Material and Engineering and it has become a nightmare to maintain your master data. You have issues with data security due to the multi divisional environment.
August 27, 2010
Is "On-Time Delivery" Just a Promise or a Process to Gain Competitive Advantage?
Over the years, transportation remains one of the top five expenditures for Hi-Tech manufacturers, Retailers and Distributors. As Hi-Tech manufacturers strive to be competitively responsive to the marketplace demands in order to leverage the economic growth, and be a step ahead of their competitors, gaining control over pace and the cost of the transportation activity becomes imperative. As per leading industry analyst firm "A 5% reduction in transportation cost has the same P&L impact as a 5-30% increase in sales".
August 13, 2010
Is your IT system geared to support the dynamics and complexities of the High Tech Value Chain?
High Tech manufacturing enterprises operate in a very competitive environment with a complex and long value chain. Value Chain Planning is the key differentiator and thrust area for these enterprises, as this lends them to better demand capture and fulfillment, better operational and financial efficiency. IT systems play a crucial role in enabling them to remain competitive. These IT systems acquired/built over a period of time, inevitably result in a complex integration landscape involving plethora of heterogeneous B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Customer) and A2A (Application to Application) transactions. Even the reporting for running operations and management decision making is premised on multiple sources of truth.
May 28, 2010
Can material bins themselves serve as kanban signals?
Continue reading " Can material bins themselves serve as kanban signals? " »
May 26, 2010
Role of Reverse Logistics in enhancing customer satisfaction by improving returns management in manufacturing
Traditionally the manufacturing industry is always focused on improving the forward logistics- the focus is to cut cycle time for product innovation, time to market, order to fulfill. This led to optimization techniques of forward logistics through usage of technology. Forward supply chain visibility is a key parameter which the customer evaluates before choosing a supplier in manufacturing.
But the paradigm is shifting gradually. Today's best of class manufacturing organizations have created their own service organizations and are realizing the importance of managing the return and repairs efficiently. There is a considerable monetary value attached to this cycle- and more important it is the loss of loyalty due to an unsatisfied customer because of delay in the replacement/repair of faulty product. This loss can be easily associated with loss of revenue, market share and other financial numbers. As a result leading manufacturing companies are leveraging technology and collaborating with partners to optimize their return, repair, replacement, recycle and remarketing processes.
In order to understand the role of reverse logistics, let us look at the key functions in the value chain which impacts the overall cycle time for execution.
- Customer service management- This involves receiving customer complaints and ensuring service contract compliance, proactive updates on service calls, status monitoring and first hand issue resolution
- Transportation and Logistics- this involves authorizing returns, collecting, sorting, testing, stocking, shipping (transportation) and disposition
- Depot repair- Managing repair, reverse engineering, remanufacturing, reassembly and reuse of salvaged components
- Channel Management- This involves measuring, monitoring, tracking and evaluating the performance of channel partners
- Financial management- This involves managing warranty and financial liability, proper inventory valuation and costing and finally recovery of appropriate costs
- Sales- Refurbished product sale through promotions and other channels
We need to now carefully examine the factors that impact these functions. Once we understand those we can understand the role of efficient reverse logistics in enhancing customer satisfaction. We will discuss those in my next blog- in the meantime let me know your views and thoughts.
May 22, 2010
Go Lean: Minimize customizations and reduce overall TCO in Oracle ERP implementation (Part 3)
There are many ways to achieve Leaner ERP implementation, and I have discussed some of the strategic levers for it in my previous blogs Go Lean (Part 2) and Go Lean (Part 1) like senior management and executive sponsorship, robust decision making framework, effective change management approach, upfront planning for middleware and reporting platforms, solution design workshops, selection of appropriate edge products and leveraging localizations. However, there are many tactical and operational levers also available for enterprises to adopt, which are primarily part of implementation execution cycle. I am discussing here some of these levers and best practices to minimize customizations:
- Boot Camp Trainings - Before initiating the solution design phase, organizations must seriously consider to conduct the boot camp trainings on chosen ERP to their key super users, business analysts and implementation core team, facilitated by System Integrator (SI). The intent for boot camps must be training to the team for vanilla features and functionalities of ERP relevant to their industry processes. This will enable them to bridge many gaps and requirements through seeded ERP functionality, and increase the overall fitment of the package application, leading towards reduced customizations.
May 7, 2010
Dairy Industry Challenges & Oracle's Solution
In this information age, with increasing awareness, consumers are becoming health conscious & want surety that the food product they consume is Safe. They are not happy with just to know the location of manufacturing plant, but are interested to know from where the raw material is originally sourced. Dairy industry, which typically produces a range of products for a variety of markets, faces even greater challenge in tracing individual product. This calls for tighter Integration between all the channel partners across the supply chain.
The dairy industry is a vertically integrated industry with both upstream and downstream trade partners of the supply chain dependent on each other to ensure quality food. I will discuss some of the challenges dairy industry is facing and Oracle's Solution for the same.
Continue reading " Dairy Industry Challenges & Oracle's Solution " »
March 23, 2010
Demand to Deliver Solution—Remedy for Supply Chain Cost Inflation in Hi-Tech Companies
Previous post:
http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2010/03/invigorating_the_topline_of_hi.html#more
"May you live in interesting times"—Chinese curse or not, this adage is truer for the recession hit Hi-Tech companies in recent times, as they struggle with challenges around shrinking margins, pressures on new product introductions, globalization and increased supply chain complexity. Our recent experience in the field has shown that Hi-Tech Clients are increasingly looking at process centered open framework driven IT investments to serve as a source of competitive advantage instead of taking a module centric approach to Enterprise Applications. The expectation is to have a seamlessly integrated, end to end ecosystem of applications that provide visibility to all demand signals, balance demand, supply and budgets in one system, reduce inventory carrying costs, enable partner negotiations and have access to concurrent analytics and Business Intelligence. The Demand to Delivery (D2D) solution jointly developed by Infosys and Oracle caters to this paradigm shift in expectations from the players in the Hi-Tech value chain. The solution comprises of 8 key process sub areas, namely—Sales and Operations Planning, Demand Management Sensing and Shaping, Strategic Sourcing, Operational Planning and Production Scheduling, Fulfillment and Warehouse Management, Logistics and Retail Execution.
What’s in it for Hi-Tech players and what is the value proposition of the solution, one might ask. The value levers for the D2D solution primarily centers on Net Revenue Improvement and Cost Reduction. In an earlier blog post on the D2D solution, we covered the operational levers through which Net Revenue Improvement can be achieved and how the D2D solution enables them. The solution can also be used derive value on the cost of side of the P&L statement and the operational levers for cost reduction primarily come under the following categories:
- Optimized Inventory using a combination of Sales and Operations Planning, Production Planning & Scheduling
- Complete visibility to support revenue and margin growth plans leading to Inventory Optimization
- Optimized production plan integrated with shop floor execution
- Higher Efficiency using Sales and Operations Planning, Strategic Network Optimization and Manufacturing Execution
- Due to a balanced network to support strategic business objectives
- Ability to React immediately to disruptions in the supply chain
- Reduced manufacturing costs with integrated MES
- Ability to Manufacture the most profitable product mix
- Lesser Capital expenses using Manufacturing Execution System and Warehouse Management Systems
- Ability to integrate outsourced manufacturing to reduce capital expenses
- Improved manufacturing productivity through integrated and balanced MESIncreased asset utilization
- Improved warehouse space, labor and resource utilization
- Maximized utilization of labor, space and equipment
- Lower Sourcing Cost using Strategic Sourcing applications like Oracle Sourcing, Sourcing Analytics, Price Protection and Ship and Debit
- Online negotiations and bids with automatic recommendations
- Cross-functional collaboration with internal and external partners
- Sourcing knowledge capture and total cost analysis
- Reduce sourcing event times and sourcing costs
- Drive sustainable savings by enforcing negotiated terms
- Improve effectiveness and efficiency of sourcing
- Lower Transportation Cost using features of Oracle Transportation Management
- Reduced transportation costs resulting from load optimization
- Ability to Assess the financial impact of proposed rate changes
- Reduced transportation costs by optimizing bid execution
- Reduced claims management costs
While this provides a 20,000 feet view of the benefits, watch this space for more ground level details on the solution……
March 15, 2010
Is it possible to achieve "Zero" breakdown in Maintenance World?
In maintenance world when we talk of "Zero Break down" most of the time maintenance crew says that it is not possible to achieve zero break down. So is it really possible to achieve "Zero Break down" for a Machine /Equipment? The answer is "Yes".
What is breakdown? :- When a Machine (M/c)is working and suddenly something fails for e.g. in case of CNC M/c hydraulic hose pipe rupture and it leads to heavy oil leakage, thus Beak down due to hydraulic leakage occurs on the M/C.
Above Failure could have been anticipated by doing regular check of hydraulic hose piping by carrying out proper preventive, predictive maintenance.
What is "Zero Breakdowns"? :- When the Maintenance Department hand over a M/C to Production Department for the Production activities, that time maintenance department can confidently say the M/C would not fail due to "Hydraulic leakage" for another 24 Hrs as they have done a proper inspection/rectification through Preventive and Predictive Maintenance on the M/C on Hydraulic side. This 24 hrs of running time without any Hydraulic failure is said to be "Zero Break Down" in Hydraulic piping area.
After 24 Hrs again maintenance team would take the machine in their custody to do preventive and predictive maintenance to ensure that there would not be any failure due to "Hydraulic leakage" for another 24 hrs, thus maintenance team take over the control of M/C after certain running period of the M/Cs and do preventive/Predictive maintenance to achieve "Zero Breakdown" in specific area e.g. 'Hydraulic Pipe failure'. Over a period of time by doing proper, regular preventive maintenance on almost all the areas of M/C instead of specific area leads to achieve Total "Zero Breakdown" on an asset for certain mentioned period time frame by the Maintenance department.
Continue reading " Is it possible to achieve "Zero" breakdown in Maintenance World? " »
March 10, 2010
Has Standardization got anything to do with recent vehicle recalls?
Standardization has long been hailed as a means of attaining more efficiency in manufacturing. Standard parts, standard processes, standard means of doing things, all allow keeping variability down. Standardization of work activities, hand movements etc have long been in practice and are seen as a way to time processes and improve them and make them more efficient. The benefits of standardization have encouraged companies to standardize various aspects of their entire supply chains also. For example, companies have standardized their way of distributing products, way their retail stores are designed, product range, look and feel of documents and so on and so forth.
Recently however, opinions have been voiced from different quarters as to whether the recent huge number of vehicle recalls from car manufacturers such as
March 4, 2010
Invigorating the topline of Hi Tech enterprises through a streamlined and efficient Demand to Deliver Value Chain
Most of the Hi Tech Manufacturing organization are reeling under tremendous margins pressure due to flat to modest growth in the topline and ever increasing costs. In this tough environment its absolutely imperative for organizations to capitalize on whatever sales opportunities are presented to them. At the same time they also need to be very aggressive in scouting of new avenues for revenue growth, so that their toplines are positively impacted.
A streamlined, efficiently run Demand to Delivery Value Chain is the key to this objective and this in turn calls for a best of breed, cutting edge, integrated, Enterprise wide solution/application to support the execution of this value chain.
February 25, 2010
Demand To Deliver Value Chain for High Tech
Are the Traditional Package based IT solutions helping us bridge the gap between various departments to give an enterprise level view?
Continue reading " Demand To Deliver Value Chain for High Tech " »
December 6, 2009
Minimizing the Bull Whip Effect in the IT Supply Chain
Continue reading " Minimizing the Bull Whip Effect in the IT Supply Chain " »
December 2, 2009
Are you getting the most out of your investment in PLM and ERP?
Continue reading " Are you getting the most out of your investment in PLM and ERP? " »
November 19, 2009
Sustainable manufacturing – The road ahead
Oracle has recently announced plan to develop an evolved offering for sustainable manufacturing using its Energy Specific Manufacturing Operation Center (MOC). It will use sensor technology from partner OMRON. While the Outcome of this initiative is yet to be seen, My focus in this blog would be to discuss about sustainable manufacturing which has become BUZZWORD from some time.
Continue reading " Sustainable manufacturing – The road ahead " »
October 6, 2009
Extend Lean To Your After Sales Service Too!!
Ever since Lean philosophy became mainstream, businesses have embraced it a lot all over the world with varying amounts of demonstrable and measurable success.
Continue reading " Extend Lean To Your After Sales Service Too!! " »
September 14, 2009
Understanding Value Stream Mapping and its applicability to your business
Value Stream Mapping is one of the lean techniques businesses employ to understand the value adding activities in their current process and design a future process after weeding out the unnecessary activities that do not add value from a customers’ point of view. This technique found its origin in the automobiles industry and has found widespread acceptance in other discrete industries and also in service industries.
Continue reading " Understanding Value Stream Mapping and its applicability to your business " »
September 5, 2009
How Risky is your supply chain?
Typically we talk about two kinds of supply chain- A responsive supply chain and an efficient supply chain. An efficient supply chain is mostly targeted at reducing costs while a responsive supply chain is designed to cater to the changing needs of the demand (both new and variant) by building some kind of redundancy in the system. But in both cases have you incorporated the risk element?
Capture actionable information from your shopfloor
So you have just implemented an ERP system that automates your organization-wide business transactions, reduces a lot of paperwork and also helps with reports at different levels of aggregation. However, when it comes to the shop floor, is your ERP capturing what goes on behind the transactions? To find out the answer, you can start by asking your business the following question-Have there been improvements in the three key elements of your OEE- namely, Quality, Performance and Availability?
Continue reading " Capture actionable information from your shopfloor " »
August 27, 2009
Green Design – A Means to reduce Product Development Costs?
It is seen that for High Technology companies’ compliance to green related regulations required for market entry is the top pressure driving green product development. Most of the High Technology manufacturers have a green product development initiative in place, even more than other industries. They also seem to brand energy efficient technology as one of their top marketing strategies
It is clear, that while today High Technology manufacturers are focused on compliance to regulations like RoHS, REACH, WEE, TSCA, etc. they must look ahead and add cost reduction strategies around green design in their efforts in order to capture and sustain competitive advantage.
But doesn’t too much focus on compliance lead to increasing product development costs and affect their sustainability in the marketplace?? Let us see how successful High Technology manufacturers address this.
Continue reading " Green Design – A Means to reduce Product Development Costs? " »
August 12, 2009
An Introduction to Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center (MOC)
Does your manufacturing intelligence system support proactive monitoring for quick decision support? Lots of data gets collected on your shop-floor – but how should it be organized to assess the performance of a machine, a line, a plant, or a fleet of plants? What will it take you to make the process more a science than an art? Oracle has launched a new product - Manufacturing Operations Center - to answer some of these questions.
Continue reading " An Introduction to Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center (MOC) " »
July 8, 2009
The Enigma of the Global Supplier Hub
Typically the way the High Tech industry operates is through the extensive use of Contract Manufacturers. These Contract Manufacturers or Manufacturing Partners as they are frequently referred to as, manufacture and test the products based on the design and specifications provided by the parent company. The Manufacturing Partners procure the components from their suppliers who are typically known as Component Partners.
Continue reading " The Enigma of the Global Supplier Hub " »
June 8, 2009
What do you optimize in your Supply Chain?
In one of my earlier blogs , I had introduced Oracle Strategic Network Optimization as a tool to optimize your supply chain. Well, the primary objective is to deliver a consistent, flexible, efficient, sustainable, Supply Chain which results in an optimized output that considers all trade-offs such as customer delivery, cost, risk, lead time, tax, carbon footprint, etc. Please refer to the link below:(http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/05/linear_programming_models_orac.html#more)
Continue reading " What do you optimize in your Supply Chain? " »
June 5, 2009
Greener ERP
Today is June 05 and it is World Environment Day. All the organizations are increasing awareness and are going green. Thinking on the same lines, i thought of some areas in a ERP, which can contribute to a Greener world.
June 1, 2009
Customizations to a ERP....
Can a ERP system exist without customizations? Can a Company run its business using a Vanilla ERP product? This is a question which can be debated on and on..
May 19, 2009
Business Intelligence Serving Manufacturing Industry
Continue reading " Business Intelligence Serving Manufacturing Industry " »
April 20, 2009
Periodic Average Costing (PAC) Demystified
Last week when I was talking to some people, there was a major hue and cry about the need for changing the costing method. They went to the extent of trying to compare Periodic Average Costing and Average Costing. But what they failed to realize was that they were comparing apples with oranges.
Continue reading " Periodic Average Costing (PAC) Demystified " »
April 17, 2009
Procure to Pay for Process Industries
Procure to Pay is a standard business flow in any Organization. In Manufacturing Sector, It is a typical business requirement to pay supplier based on goods finally delivered after inspection. All ERP Systems handles this requirement. This serves Discrete Manufacturer pretty well. But, what about the Process Manufacturer, does it serve well for them too? Let’s see.
Continue reading " Procure to Pay for Process Industries " »
April 8, 2009
Process or Discrete manufacturing.. What difference does it make??
Whenever we talk about process manufacturing, it is assumed similar to Discrete Manufacturing. It also has operations, activities, work orders etc. right? Agree, but it has much more then that. Just an example, how do you measure a computer or Car? By numbers.. 2 computers or 3 Cars.. What about a cup of coffee?? 1 Cup, 200 ml, 190 mg, % Coffee.. In Discrete Manufacturing, 1 plus 1 makes 2, while in Process Manufacturing, It usually less then 2. Complexity of process manufacturing has just started!!!
Continue reading " Process or Discrete manufacturing.. What difference does it make?? " »
March 22, 2009
Why Lean may need ERP?
The traditional thinking is that Lean and ERP are contrary to one another. Lean signifies a pull system and simplicity whereas ERP signifies a push-based complex environment that relies on innumerable transactions at every step to run smoothly. Lean is reality-oriented while ERP is data-in-the-system-oriented. One can argue forever on these lines…
If one scratches the surface, however, it does not seem so contrarian after all.
Consider some real-life examples below from my consulting experience where an ERP system assisted the lean philosophy of an enterprise.
March 19, 2009
Give your ERP a Lean Boost
March 18, 2009
Top Down vs Bottom up Techniques in Manufacturing..The debate continues-2
Previous post: Top Down vs Bottom-up Techniques in Manufacturing… The debate continues
While identifying areas for standardization during implementation is relatively easier to achieve, it is difficult to define and implement acceptable standards for identified business processes. The degree of differentiation in the business process - identified for standardization, across the entities implementing the process could vary. This calls for an assessment to determine the approach to standardization. A high degree of differentiation will require a phased approach to standardization. This phased approach involves defining the standard process, acceptable limits for differentiation from the standard and a plan to converge from the variants of the standard to the standard process over a period of time.
Continue reading " Top Down vs Bottom up Techniques in Manufacturing..The debate continues-2 " »
March 13, 2009
Top Down vs. Bottom-up techniques in Manufacturing… The debate continues
Continuing from my previous post:
Standardization: Top Down vs. Bottom-up
There are a few more considerations to the standardization approach. Implementation of enterprise software has led to the motto “Common…and Global”. As a result, companies are adopting standards in definitions and processes for global implementation. A standard implementation refers to a set of guidelines which is better known as a template or a blueprint allowing minimal deviations during rollouts. At times, these monolithic implementations indirectly lead to a situation, where established and efficient local practices are abandoned or compromised to make way for standardization. This in turn has the potential to create large scale organizational change issues and productivity loss in the short-term.
Continue reading " Top Down vs. Bottom-up techniques in Manufacturing… The debate continues " »
February 24, 2009
Is Lean Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes -II
Previous post - Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes?
A straight forward answer to whether 'Lean manufacturing is the answer to operational efficiency woes' is not feasible, but researchers have acknowledged that along with agility, leanness in operations and manufacturing is important. Most of the ERP and Supply Chain products provide ways and means to inculcate these processes into the e-business architecture.
Continue reading " Is Lean Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes -II " »
February 23, 2009
Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes?
Continue reading " Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes? " »
February 12, 2009
Pull Production: Have you achieved global maxima?
In one of my earlier blogs, I had mentioned the pitfalls of using a ‘Pull Production’ in case of a remanufactured product where there is a combination of new and salvaged percentage of components. Even with a new product manufacturing and pull production, you may not have optimized your global supply chain.
Continue reading " Pull Production: Have you achieved global maxima? " »
January 30, 2009
Should Hi-Tech Manufacturers increase outsourcing in these times of recession?
Let us examine the business drivers of a typical Hi-Tech manufacturer. Hi-Tech manufacturers are driven by the main factors of innovation and new product innovation, which are becoming increasingly evident now in the times of global recession. The Hi-Tech industry is characterized by declining product life cycles, falling prices which have an impact on any investments by these companies into any new machinery or new manufacturing technologies. Outsourcing provides the answer in such circumstances enabling these companies to push such risks on to their outsourcing partner.
January 18, 2009
Is Pull Production the final word?
Typically when we talk about improvements on the shop floor, we hear a lot about Pull Production. Originating from the Toyota Corporation, pull production is a process that aims to arrange an organization so that customer preference or orders are what cause materials to be "pulled" through a system.
Well this may work well in case of a new manufacturing plant provided there is same kind of discipline on the shop floor, this type of production runs into roadblocks in case of remanufacturing where salvaged components go into the final assembly.
January 2, 2009
Operational Excellence Metrics – Implementation Considerations
Past couple of decades manufacturing organizations have focused on improving the quality of their business process to achieve operational excellence. ERP implementation is seen as an opportunity to re-engineer the existing business process, define / review Operational Excellence Metrics and ways to measure these metrics.
Continue reading " Operational Excellence Metrics – Implementation Considerations " »
January 1, 2009
Case for a unified efficiency metric
In the current business scenario, manufacturing businesses are under pressure to outperform the prevailing economic trend. There is a need for a broader organizational perspective/metric that needs to be taken into account. Without this, it would result in the transfer of, if not addition of overall ‘waste’ to the organization.
December 31, 2008
Troubled Times? Remanufacture
Typically in the automobile industry, there is more wear and tear given the fact that mechanical parts are involved. So whenever we have a faulty engine, what do we do? We either send it back to the manufacturer (if it is within warranty) or go to a service mechanic. And when it is beyond repair, we scrap it (normally we buy it from a dealer who then takes custody of the old engine).
As companies struggle to cut costs in a dwindling economy, many of the automobile manufacturers have resorted to what we call as ‘Remanufacturing’.
December 29, 2008
Operational Excellence in Recessionary times – An imperative or a distraction?
Tough times call for tough measures and that is what companies today are doing as a reaction to the recessionary conditions that have hit economies the world over. Every other day, newspapers and newscasters greet us with layoffs, impending bankruptcies, bailouts and other such grim news. Manufacturing companies, naturally, are not immune to the crisis afflicting financial companies. They are being indirectly hit by shrinking consumer demand and non-availability of easy sources of funding.
December 12, 2008
Importance of Outsourcing to provide flexibility to Hi-Tech Manufacturers
Today’s global environment has placed increased pressure on Hi-Tech manufacturers to become more competitive and profitable. Global outsourcing activities have increased in importance and have increasingly emerged as a key strategic tool in achieving cost reduction, quality and delivery improvement, cycle time reduction, and improved responsiveness to customer, competitive, and financial market demands. It is estimated that a well planned and executed global outsourcing strategy can result in a cost savings differential of 15 to 25 percent when compared to manufacturing inhouse.
Using external suppliers to design, manufacture, ship and service products or components - has been a growing trend in recent years as Hi-Tech manufacturers have sought, among other things, to divest themselves of production capacity (and the inherent risks associated with owning capital equipment), lower their labor costs and maintain greater flexibility in the face of ever-shrinking product lifecycles.
Continue reading " Importance of Outsourcing to provide flexibility to Hi-Tech Manufacturers " »
December 9, 2008
Regulatory compliance for Hi-Tech Manufacturers is mandatory - non-compliance stakes are high
From 2001, the shadow of WEEE Directive (Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment) and RoHS Directive (Restriction on Hazardous Substances) had begun looming over the world electronics manufacturing industry. By 2007, most EU Member States had implemented WEEE and the deadline for RoHS was achieved in July 2006. Other countries are now building their environment compliance approaches similar to the EU directives, e.g. some states in the USA, Korea, etc have put in place their own regulations. China, Chile, Brazil and Columbia also now have some environment management Directives in place. Japanese laws had been in place even earlier and many Japanese companies are well ahead in implementing cleaner technologies and in greening their supply chain. While the larger companies in most countries have started their compliance measures, most small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) including those in Korea and Taiwan have fallen behind.
December 4, 2008
Manufacturing Intelligence: From Data to Decision Making
Most Manufacturing organizations today capture tons of data during the day to day transactions that are carried out on the shop floor. Thanks to cheaper disk space and IT departments eagerness to digitize all the data to be collected on the floor - large volumes of data are being collected. State of the art MES packages today enable a lot of data to be collected which complements the data that is captured by the ERP package that has been deployed. But inspite of so much of data the general feedback from shop floor supervisors is that they don't get the correct data at the correct time to help them take those crucial decisions on the floor. There are primarily two kinds of issues: the speed at which the required data can be recovered and the flexibility to slice and dice the available data accross different dimensions to help the shop floor manager take those critical decisions.
Continue reading " Manufacturing Intelligence: From Data to Decision Making " »
November 27, 2008
Shop Floor Strategies - Managing Scrap and Rework
A tough business climate as today's challenges corporations to introspect and reinvent themselves. This also provides businesses with an opportunity to improve their odds of success during a recession by striving to achieve operational excellence in all functional processes including manufacturing. One of the keys to improving operational effeciency in the shop floor is to identify and reduce non- value adding activities and waste as much as possible. Managing rework and scrap is one such area to focus on. Rework and scrap often constitute a significant proportion of work content and material handling in the shop floor, yet organizations rarely expend the necessary effort to systematically reduce scrap and rework in the plant and floor areas.
Continue reading " Shop Floor Strategies - Managing Scrap and Rework " »
November 17, 2008
Manufacturing Execution System – Make it work for you!
Are you having to deal with low percentage of on-time completions, high throughput times, frequent line down situations or high WIP? Obviously something is very wrong, particularly if you said "Yes" to more than one of the above. Having consulted for several discrete manufacturing clients has made one thing very apparent to me - a lean and agile manufacturing environment is not an option but an imperative for manufacturing industries to achieve operational excellence. All of the above were contra-indicators of operational excellence. A manufacturing execution system (MES) can support a manufacturing firm in achieving this very objective. An MES system works in tandem with a mainstream ERP system to execute, monitor and manage the production processes on a shop floor. Together with an ERP system, an MES system can nudge (or push, if required!) an enterprise into adopting standardized processes and at the same time creating key data elements for performance measurements.
Consider the ways in which an MES system can assist you:
- Detailed scheduling: An MES system can take input from capacities defined for work centers and hourly usage of machines and labor (in routings) to perform detail scheduling. Sophisticated MES systems can take setup times into cognizance to minimize setups and maximize utilization
- Dispatching: A MES system can use a dispatch list format to feed work to work centers. It can be used to perform real time prioritization of work orders to reflect reality on the floor - component shortages, current work center availability, downstream work center availability, premium customers and even executive diktats (a late evening call from the plant manager overrides everything else!!)
- Operational Reporting: An MES system, complemented by the use of the mobile devices using radio frequency, can be used to perform move transactions from one operation to another. This is important in a job shop environment which may have long lead times, to track work orders, correctly reflect work in process costs and perform dispatching of jobs
- Nonconformance tracking: An MES system will provide ways of tracking and managing non-conformances. While eliminating waste such as non-conformances remains a top priority for organizations, managing them on occurrence remains a grim reality. Ways to quickly identify, segregate and disposition non-conformances will aid in minimizing impact upon customer orders
An MES system is now frequently offered by ERP vendors as an add-on or they provide integration with best-of-breed MES vendors. So its time for companies who have not yet invested in MES systems to see how they can make it work for them!
November 9, 2008
Key Factors for Success of ERP Implementations - Part 2
In the first part of the blog, we looked at 7 key factors that an implementing organization should consider before deciding to go ahead with its ERP implementation project.
http://infosysblogs.com/oracle/2008/10/key_factors_for_success_of_erp.html#more
In this blog, we will analyze 3 additional factors that are also vital for success.
Continue reading " Key Factors for Success of ERP Implementations - Part 2 " »
November 5, 2008
High Tech Reverse Logistics: A Potential Cost Cutting Avenue
To put in simple terms, Reverse Logistics is the flow of Returned goods by the customer to a state where the product is disposed of, repaired, recycled or internally consumed. And because of the strict norms pertaining to disposition of goods in the high tech sector, this is a very strategic area.
Continue reading " High Tech Reverse Logistics: A Potential Cost Cutting Avenue " »
October 31, 2008
Key Factors for Success of ERP Implementations
ERP Implementations are generally time consuming and expensive - more so if the implementation involves multiple geographies with different languages, different business processes, legal requirements and accounting norms. Companies typically go for ERP implementations with the aim of integrating disparate systems spread across different business functions so that the top management can get an integrated view of the operations of the organization. Optimal usage of an ERP system also leads to reduction in operational costs and supports strategic planning.
Continue reading " Key Factors for Success of ERP Implementations " »
October 22, 2008
High Tech Industry’s Sourcing Value Proposition: Reverse Auction
With the current slowdown being accelerated by the financial turmoil, companies are increasingly looking at avenues to cut costs yet maintain profitability against all odds. This is a tricky situation given the fact that any decision leads to a bullwhip effect owing to the integrated nature of today’s supply chain. One of the time tested techniques to achieve this is through Reverse Auctions which is quite prevalent in the High Tech industry.
Continue reading " High Tech Industry’s Sourcing Value Proposition: Reverse Auction " »
September 4, 2008
Do you wanna expedite your Order cycles?
Where is my Order????? When will it get shipped???? Another delay, yet again!!!! These are some of the very common and frequently asked questions by the Customers.
The challenging business needs, difficult to hold enough inventory, increase in cost of manufacturing and more so frequent re-org’s have made manufacturers to re-think about their business strategy. The business drivers are changing and increasing at a fast pace and Enterprises using ERP’s expect the product vendors to be more than up to speed to offer capabilities in the standard product and also provide an Integration strategy to offer seamless out-of-box integrations.These capabilities are targeted towards Increase in Agent Productivity, Significant reduction in cycle time, Automating Business flows, Orchestrating Business flows spread across disparate applications and Enabling Shared service operations etc.
Oracle has a taken a step forward to meet the above objectives and much more than that. The latest release of Oracle EBS (eBusiness Suite), which is popularly known as R12, is a significant step to meet the complex and demanding business objectives. The features like Multi Org Access Control (MOAC) allow agents to access data spread across Operating units from a single responsibility. The enhancements done as part of EBS R12 in Order Management, Advanced Pricing, iStore help in increase of Agent productivity and shorten the Order cycles.
Come and join the journey if you wanna know on how to expedite and streamline your prolonged Order cycles…….
This session will elucidate how Oracle R12 features can be leveraged to enable shared service operations with features like MOAC. It will elaborate the New R12 features in the areas of Order Management, Advance Pricing and iStore with suitable examples. The session will explain on how the new features like Price book will join the core stream and make it more transparent to the customers. This session will also talk about how the new R12 features and Fusion middleware product BPEL came together and delivered a composite Application model for a big Hi-Tech giant.
Oracle's latest version of its E-Business Suite (EBS) is a significant release. Current users need to determine if and when this upgrade will be appropriate, if they have not already done so. New users of Oracle applications need to ensure that Release 12 is the appropriate release to implement. – Gartner
The journey begins in the biggest Oracle Technology symposium – Oracle Open World, 21st-25th Sep 2008……
Session ID: S300276
Session Title: Shorten Your Order Cycles with New Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Features: Wanna Know How?
Track: Oracle E-Business Suite
August 31, 2008
High Tech Industry: A State of Flux
August 8, 2008
Hi-Tech Trash: Have our e-dumps become safer?
Scientific American featured a thought provoking article in November 2007 titled--Trashed Tech: Where Do Old Cell Phones, TVs and PCs Go to Die? The enormity of the problem of electronic waste and the urgent need for producing toxin free electronic components could not have been discussed better. I had a serious conscience attack about replacing my old cell phone after reading the article!!
Continue reading " Hi-Tech Trash: Have our e-dumps become safer? " »
August 4, 2008
High Tech Sector’s Label Printing Needs: Are we there?
If there is one thing which we can call as the livewire of the High Tech Sector is Labels. The entire high tech industry moves on labels. In Standard ERP Packages there are certain limitations in terms of volume of labels, performance and quality of bar code labels. As a result, typically companies have looked at other middleware options as a plug and play with the ERP Packages. Latest offerings from the ERP vendors seem to address this problem removing the need for middleware.
Continue reading " High Tech Sector’s Label Printing Needs: Are we there? " »
July 31, 2008
What is the Right Product Structure for the High Tech Sector?
Continue reading " What is the Right Product Structure for the High Tech Sector? " »
July 21, 2008
High Tech Industry’s Logistics Woes: Oracle Transportation Management may be the answer
July 19, 2008
Collaboration: The way forward for High Tech Industry
In his classic best-seller ‘The Goal’, Eliyahu M. Goldratt discusses about the three fundamental ways of making money for a going concern namely,
- Increase throughput (the rate at which the system generates money through sales)
- Reduce Inventory (all the money that system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sells)
- Reduce Operational expenses (all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput)
Continue reading " Collaboration: The way forward for High Tech Industry " »
May 15, 2008
Measuring manufacturing system parameters – first step to drive towards manufacturing execution excellence
Corporations today are spending significant amount of time and money in deploying state of the art ERP software like Oracle, SAP etc. IT management in these big corporations is more concerned to get the software deployed and then they consider their job is done. To say the truth the job is not even half done in most cases. The fail to recognize an important parameter - the ability of the system to perform as per "expectations" after the system has been deployed.
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