IQMS Blog for Manufacturing ERP Expertise

… And do you want Document Control with that?

On Tuesday, we highlighted a whitepaper with valuable tips to help you select the ultimate ERP vendor. Today, we are offering a detailed eBook to everyone out there who has already selected a new manufacturing ERP system and is about to embark on the implementation process.  Titled, “Project Management Tips for Successful ERP Implementations,” our eBook is chocked full of advice to help keep your project on time and on budget.

In our new whitepaper titled, “Become an ERP Sleuth. Do Your Due Diligence When Selecting a New ERP Vendor,” IQMS reveals the secrets behind finding the best fit when selecting a new ERP partner. Inside the paper, you will find a necessary list of clues that should be examined when researching potential new ERP vendors, such as: 

Downtime can represent a significant loss in operating efficiency if not managed properly. While many resources are expended on analyzing and optimizing efficiencies on the shop floor, some basic areas of critical importance outside of the manufacturing heart of a business are often neglected.

NPE 2012 has come and gone. This every three year event is one of the largest trade shows for one manufacturing industry segment: plastics. If you were following a lot of the conversations surrounding this latest event, you are aware that the big question was: How would the new venue (Orlando) compare to NPE's previous home for the last few decades (Chicago)? Would people come? Would it be successful? Are trade shows still a viable forum for companies to present and attendees to gain knowledge?

IQMS is growing. This year, IQMS was selected by Inc. magazine as one of America’s fastest growing companies. We’ve also increased our staffing in all departments by at least 20 percent. Our projections indicate that much more growth is on the horizon.

Problems are often masked with symptoms that lead us away from the root cause. I recently had an experience I would like to share with you that sheds some light on this concept and it involved one of our RealTime Production Monitoring devices and its connection to the Local Area Network (LAN).

In this age of virtuality, I pose a question: "Do you know where your inventory is located?" Not your physical inventory - that's probably somewhere on your plant floor and you probably have a very efficient system to track this inventory. I'm talking about your virtual inventory. It's yours, it's on your books and it's virtually elsewhere. Two examples of virtual inventory are Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Outsourced inventory.

When it comes to unwanted fires, there are two types of people who deal with them: firefighters and fire preventers. The firefighters are people who arrive on the scene with all of their equipment and expertise. They deal with the situation as quickly as possible and emerge from the dowsed fire as heroes. Kids want to be like them and the rest of us respect and admire them. 

When you think of an ERP implementation, one of the first things that usually comes to mind is the process of converting your whole business from one system to a new one. A subset of the total business system conversion is the addition of a recently acquired business or new facility. As a testament to our strong customer base and their growing businesses, we have had many requests of late to add a new entity to an existing EnterpriseIQ installation. These requests have encompassed many different scenarios: