Production Management Suite Whether you manufacture complex solutions or simple products, you need strong production control in order to build a competitive advantage. As the global marketplace continues to shrink profit margins and customers become more demanding, businesses are looking for agile solutions that can provide the infrastructure they need to respond quickly and efficiently.
Epicor offers a comprehensive solution for make-to-order, mixed-mode, make-to-stock, engineer-to-order and configure–to-order manufacturers; including light assembly features for distribution businesses. Modular in design, the production control suite of modules include Job Management, Lean Manufacturing, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Quality Assurance and Advanced Quality Management.
Job Management Job Management is a comprehensive production control solution designed specifically for the planning, routing, scheduling, costing and tracking of products; including assembled, manufactured and semi-finished products. It includes innovative tools for better planning and costing with historical run analysis that compares estimates to actuals on a run-by-run basis. With Epicor Job Management, users can more easily identify wasted processes and continuous improvement opportunities on the production floor for maximized profitability.
Advanced Production Advanced Production deploys batching technology that enables users to group multiple parts or operations together for key production processes. The result of this batching process is a single reporting entity or job for simplified scheduling, tracking and reporting of labor and materials on the plant floor.
The functionality of Advanced Production is available in the job planning and resource scheduling functions within Epicor. Both planned and "on-the-fly" grouping provides powerful flexibility to end users. Additionally, users can select to plan sequentially – one operation after another or concurrently - operations to be complete at the same time for nested operations.
Lean Manufacturing With increased global competition and the demands of an online supply-chain, customers have more influence than ever before. Customers are, demanding greater product flexibility, smaller, more frequent deliveries and higher product quality, at a lower price. Businesses are widening the scope and focus of lean principles to encompass all processes that contribute to the bottom line. The true benefits of lean thinking will only be fully realized when the entire enterprise adopts the lean ideology.
Specific functionality has been developed in Epicor for plant floor operations that are adopting work orderorder less Kanban manufacturing strategies in part or fully to pull rather than push products through the manufacturing process. Epicor Lean Manufacturing Kanban functionality supports this.
Manufacturing Execution System The Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is an easy-to-use, online system for the plant floor that allows plant- based transactions real- time visibility throughout the Epicor solution. This easy to use interface is developed for end users and offers options of deployment that include touch- screen monitors as well as bar- coded enablement to simplify data entry while reducing mistakes. The Manufacturing Execution System, Epicor MES provides accurate labor reporting, a vital concern in job costing and job status. Online transaction tracking gives management a current picture of what is occurring on the plant floor by employee and job.
Integration with Epicor Job Management, Scheduling, Quality Assurance and Advanced Material Management eliminates dual entry and provides online, real-time views of the latest plant floor scheduling priorities. In addition, integrated document management allows plant floor access to needed documentation including product drawings, process documents – even multimedia videos of difficult to explain processes.
Quality Assurance Extending your solution with Quality Assurance ensures that complete visibility of quality operations including visibility of items in the quality process. Accurate costing demands that products moved through quality accurately reflect their value and are removed from appropriate WIP. Additionally, this module includes processes for supplier returns with links to Accounts Payable for automated debit processing; closing the loop on traceability of products in and out of quality within the plant.
Tie together all quality functions, whether it’s scrapping end parts, rejecting raw materials or tracking first article inspections. Inspectors have queues of items to inspect with full disposition and corrective action follow-up. Plant floor employees can flag parts as non-conformant, which moves them into an inspection queue. Parts that fail inspection may be flagged for review by a material review board.
Advanced Quality Management Epicor Advanced Quality Management (AQM) is an extension of the Quality Assurance offering. AQM provides the breadth and depth of details to not just find and fix problems faster, AQM allows you to prevent issues from occurring. AQM manages the nitty-gritty details that make or break quality. From part characteristics, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and control plans to inspections plans – AQM links key functions with best in class processes to assure error-proof quality. On the plant floor, AQM manages document revisions and changes, work instructions, employee training and skills, nonconformance and corrective actions, gages, equipment as well as a detailed statistical process control (SPC) function.
With planning to production coverage for quality, AQM puts companies in a constant state of compliance. AQM provides turnkey support for ISO, automotive (TS) aerospace (AS) and FDA (cGMP, 21CFR Part11). With a single platform that meets key industry compliance needs from the bottom up, AQM drives cost and time out of the quality and compliance functions while raising the bar of performance.
