Manufacturing White Papers and Demos

SaaS does not spare customers the need to ask vendors the same questions about service levels, costs, and other issues that they would ask themselves if they were planning on-premise implementations. Of the nine questions customers should ask about SaaS, seven also apply to on-premise deployment. However, the issues of changing needs prompt two more questions unique to SaaS.

Many people equate Lean manufacturing with the use of kanbans: physical or visual signals that trigger replenishment. While kanban use is indeed a part of many Lean programs, it is not the only solution for triggering the movement of material.

When talking to a manufacturing ERP vendor, make sure you ask them these 10 critical questions to make sure you're getting the right manufacturing solution.

This paper, based on the experience and best practice established by early adopters, sets out a framework for deciding on and implementing on-demand ERP within enterprises of 250 employees or more, or in divisions within a larger enterprise. The paper will examine key concerns such as data integrity in enterprise systems, maintaining compliance and ensuring proper process management, as well as discussing new skills and approaches to help maximize returns on investment.

Small and mid-sized pharmaceutical manufacturers are struggling to manage large group purchase organization (GPO) contracts, process heavy volumes of chargeback submissions and ensure pricing policies are fully compliant with regulatory requirements.

The investment of money, time and change in processes that come with a software implementation has a profound impact on any company, making it imperative that the right product and service provider are identified during the selection process.

Businesses of all sizes and in all industries are finding it difficult and costly to continue to update and modify enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems after they have been installed. The initial investment to acquire and implement an ERP system is substantial. But even after the system is up and running, the costs continue to mount as the business evolves, requiring the ERP system to evolve as well to keep pace.

Adoption of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sales model is accelerating at a phenomenal rate in the region, changing the way vendors do business and the way organisations use software. SaaS has been one of the IT industry’s hottest buzzwords over the past couple of years, and for many good reasons. The ease of use, rapid deployment, limited upfront investment in capital and staffing, plus a reduction in software management responsibility all make SaaS a desirable alternative to on-site solutions.

More manufacturers and providers of traditional software solutions are moving to SaaS models that meet today's competitive needs for agility and real-time information, without requiring manufacturers to make a large up-front financial outlay. Confidence continues to increase thanks to pioneering SaaS providers who are able to point to a history of successful implementation.

In this paper we respectfully present our conclusion, namely that some LEAN initiatives can be hugely strengthened with a synergistic ERP implementation and vice versa, whereas in other cases the two efforts should really be viewed as separate initiatives and managed independently from each other. This is, however, not an open ended "it depends on what you want" answer; we conclude that specific LEAN initiatives will eventually fail without considerable attention to specific ERP aspects but that other specific LEAN initiatives and specific ERP functionality have little in common.