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" »
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?
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" »
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)" »
In the past couple of years, the world has been facing challenges of increasing business complexities, volatile transportation costs and severe resource constraints. For midsize Logistics Service Providers and Industrial Manufacturing Enterprises this has created a need for an integrated logistics solution that leads to reduced freight spend, improved customer service and hence increased profits.
Continue reading "Infosys OTM Fixed Price Offerings: An Oracle Accelerate Solution" »
Improving logistics performance still remains a challenge for many firms, even those that have achieved better planning and optimization from implementing well structured TMS applications available in the market.
Continue reading "Planning Roundtrip Multi-Stop Delivery Routes in OTM" »
In the last decade, the emergence of e-commerce coupled with the rise in smaller and more frequent orders has made parcel shipping operations one of the key functions of transportation management.
Further to my earlier post on managing expectation from MDM implementation – we will discuss on some of the best practices for Master Data Management (MDM).
A company decide on going for a MDM program - what are the first steps to be taken to ensure a successful implementation of the program.
In continuation of my earlier post : http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/06/business_intelligence_serving_1.html .I would like to emphasize on BI needs by mid and small sized companies too.
Continue reading "BI : Need of Mid and Small Manufacturing Companies too" »
This is followup blog to:
http://www.infosysblogs.com/oracle/2009/05/finally_maketoorder_solution_f_1.html
In Last Blog, I discussed about Oracle’s MTO solution for process manufacturer. Let’s go a little deeper to understand how it will benefit Process as well as hybrid manufacturer. We will also see how this solution has evolved through various releases of OPM.
Continue reading "Oracle's MTO Solution for Process Industries" »
In the current recession hit market, Manufacturing is one of the industries that is facing global competition that it has never experienced. Reductions in profit margins, Increase in raw material cost along with government regulations demand more innovative ways to look on to Optimize resources, gain productivity, minimize investment.
Continue reading "Business Intelligence Serving Manufacturing Industry" »
Continue reading "MDM Implementation – Managing Expectations!" »
With much awaited R12.1.1, which was released in early May 2009, Oracle has finally introduced full fledged “Make-to-Order” solution for process manufacturer as part of their OPM suite enhancement.
Continue reading "Finally “Make-to-Order” Solution from Oracle for Process Manufacturer !!!" »
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??" »
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" »
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" »
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" »
Continue reading "Is LEAN Manufacturing the answer to your operational woes?" »
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?" »
Oracle Mobile Supply Chain Applications architecture empowers users to achieve new levels of productivity and accuracy. At the same time flexibility of this module along with features of hand held devices available in market makes the system extremely easy to use. Functions required for all transactions can be performed either using RF scanners (with barcodes) or through an Oracle form on hand held device.
Following are some of the key benefits which drive Operational Excellence by implementation of MSCA (Mobile Supply Chain Applications) are:
MSCA comes with standard screens on hand held devices for doing receiving transactions, manufacturing transactions, shipping transactions, inventory transactions and quality data entry. Standard MSCA screens will have a lot of fields which may or may not be used by an operator. It is one of the critical steps in an MSCA implementation to identify in each transaction screen which fields are required and which ones can be removed. MSCA provides option to customize the screens and have only the fields required in a preferred sequence for transactions. This goes hand in hand with design of key documents used in shop floor like Work order, Receipt traveler, Pick slip and any other traveler used during transaction. On these documents identify the key fields which are used for data entry and barcode them.
Oracle Warehouse Management module can be implemented in addition to MSCA to write additional rules which will optimize the travel time and further improve Operational efficiency. It also supports cross docking, flexible label printing, task assignments and LPN (License Plate Number) support for transactions. One of the prerequisite for implementing Oracle Warehouse Management module is using Stock locators and implementation of MSCA. Hence make sure if MSCA is implemented as standalone module locators are enables.
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.
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" »
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’.
The recent macroeconomic changes and the speed at which they impacted end-consumer demand have significantly affected organizations. Some of the immediate effects on businesses include: Production Shutdown: Excess inventory piled up at different stages of the supply chain have caused manufacturing facilities to shutdown production to reduce inventoryWorkforce layoff: To react to reduced market demand and to cut costs, manufacturing facilities are reducing work force to continue to be competitive
Continue reading "Challenges in Demand Management in Recessionary Times" »
Continue reading "Redefine your measurements to stimulate operational excellence" »
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" »
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" »
To remain competitive in today's environment, manufacturing companies are looking at boosting their supply chain performance. One of the key levers for improving supply chain is 'cost reduction' at various stages of the entire chain.
Continue reading "Using Operational Levers To Boost Supply Chain Performance" »
Standardization helps businesses develop the ability to "consistently" deliver high quality products and services its customers. It drives manufacturing excellence by raising the efficiencies of operations by reducing process variability, adopting optimal procedures to complete work and then adapting those procedures as effective practice within the organization.
While most organizations understand the importance of process standardizations, there could be confusion with respect to the approach that should be followed. Businesses looking at standardizing its operations can look at the following approaches -
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:
Last week when I was in Kansas City presenting a paper at the 2008 APICS International Conference, I had an interesting observation. There was a tremendous emphasis on Sustainability. We talk about Lean Supply Chain but companies were one step ahead discussing Green Supply Chain. Initially I had dismissed it as another fad but I was amazed at the commitment more so in the High Tech Domain.
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
Today, ERP is used more to drive business improvements & operational efficiencies and hence, any delays or budget over-runs could impact the business. However, most independent surveys and studies indicate that about 55 percent of ERP Implementation projects incur budget overruns. According to Standish Group, a research firm, the average IT project runs over budget by about 43 percent. Among the litany of reasons quoted (such as excessive focus on technology at the expense of business processes, communication shortfalls, project management and operational issues) estimation & bad planning rank high in the list.
Continue reading "Improving Package Implementations Estimates using Package Points" »
Continue reading "Thinking of R12? Go for an Enhanced Upgrade" »
R12 is a milestone in Journey to Fusion
Oracle’s E-Business Suite Release 12 is Oracle’s latest version of their business applications with an upgrade path to Oracle Fusion Application. The technology stack is upgraded to Fusion Middleware, the backbone of Fusion Applications.
Continue reading "Upgrading to Oracle R12? Keep Fusion in mind" »
The last month and a half has been exciting! The ardent cricket fan in me has been treated to some rapid fire cricket through the Indian Premier League 20:20 extravaganza. Round about the same time, my project team also started rapid application development using SCRUM, a methodology I would call the 20:20 version of the waterfall model of software development. Interestingly, the word SCRUM also has its origins from the sport of rugby where a “scrum” is a group of people responsible for picking up the ball and moving it forward.
Continue reading "SCRUM Methodology: Does the Twenty-Twenty Version of the Waterfall Model Work?" »
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.
