Everyone recognizes the familiar phrase, "Are we there yet?" and can associate with it from either their childhood or during parenthood. This age old question is typically asked during a family trip or maybe just a long ride to visit family and friends. The responses are usually: "10 minutes less than the last time you asked," "almost," "very soon" or something that I cannot type.
With the invention of in-car and Smartphone navigation systems, we (or some humanized computer voice) can actually tell the intrepid inquirer the exact time that we will arrive at our destination. How simple is that? I get in the car and punch in where I want to go and it tells me what time I will arrive.
It would be nice to have navigation for your manufacturing facility, wouldn't it? Today's navigation systems can take into account traffic congestion, construction and emergency vehicles, reroute you in real time and let you know if you will be late. In a manufacturing facility, those road bound disruptions correlate to unexpected equipment downtime, unplanned material outages, excessive scrap, lack of an operator, etc. These unexpected interruptions can potentially cause you to be late for your customers.
Capable to promise tools can provide an estimated time for delivery, but you don't really embark on the road until the job goes into the plant. A good manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system should provide all the necessary tools (such as material requirements planning, real-time production monitoring, scrap reporting and time and attendance) to provide real-time data to let you know if you need to adjust your "route" in order to make the shipment on time.
The RealTime Machine Monitoring module from IQMS even lets you know, through color coded LightSticks, if your machines are "driving" slow, stopped or on time in real time. With these tools all embedded into a single ERP system, you will continually have feedback for your customers so they know when your product will be "there."
Hit the bull's-eye every time on delivery promise dates with accurate and efficient capable to promise tools from IQMS. Click below to learn more:
