Six Manufacturing Weaknesses of Outdated Systems

Manufacturers relying on obsolete ERP technology suffer from disjointed and inconsistent processes and a lack of performance accountability. There are six major business weaknesses that are caused by outdated systems. If your business is suffering from any of these issues, you could be losing productivity and profitability.

1. Limited insights into costs and margins - Does your ERP lacks the flexibility to integrate every aspect of your manufacturing shop from inventory to procurement, workforce planning to shop floor data, workstation capacity to material prices? Does it also lacks the flexibility to identify your most and least profitable customers and to show job costs by customer, product line, time period, part, and so on? An ERP with this amount of inflexibility will make it nearly impossible for you to compete in today’s marketplace.
2. Inability to support business insight - Does your ERP lacks the flexibility to analyze profitability trends, making it tough—if not impossible— to judge whether the next job is even worth your time and effort? What if it also lacks the flexibility to track costs across the entire manufacturing process, from materials coming in to finished products going out? Employees at every level of your organization need modern tools to support their processes or they become disengaged, dissatisfied liabilities to your business.
3. No flexibility to scale up for business growth - Does your ERP software lacks the flexibility to scale up in line with your growth? Is it so rigid it requires intensive development and customization as applications clog up your server resources and slow down performance? Obsolete systems have traditionally incorporated their own protocols and data formats designed around obscure technology. This makes it impossible to add and integrate any new applications you might need to stay up with success. The result is expensive, time-consuming upgrades to ensure your systems and processes continue to accommodate evolving requirements.
4. Rigidity that limits informed decision making - Does your ERP display the critical business information you need to make the right decisions at the right time? Does it display the same kind of information regardless of the kind of jobs you do, making half of what you see irrelevant to your decision-making process? An antiquated, one-size-fits-all approach often means you’ll view the same kind of data as everyone else using the same system— no matter what kinds of jobs go through your shop. That can be a real waste of time.
5. Cumbersome and inefficient production scheduling - Does your outdated ERP system lacks the flexibility to seamlessly integrate your planning and scheduling? The ability to manage production and scheduling plays a huge role in the success of any job shop. Yet older ERP systems tend to be cumbersome and disjointed. Multiple screens, interconnected pages, and a lack of end-to-end visibility makes it difficult to react to last minute changes to orders.
6. No ability to quickly produce accurate and competitive job quotes - Does your ERP lacks the flexibility to automate the quoting process, leaving you to manually hunt down the data you need every single time? Is it so rigid it only allows you to create quotes in one set way, slowing you down even more? The ability to quickly produce an accurate and competitive quote is what separates the winners from the “also-rans” or the “didn’t-even-run-at-alls.”

If your current ERP is keeping you from being competitive or expanding your operations, it’s time to look at the many great ERP alternatives on the market.