Lead Time Management

From enabling the identification and tracking of non-value adding activities inherent in your current operational processes, to the automation of manual processes, SYSPRO's powerful functionality provides you with the tools to implement your LEAN initiatives. Its integrated nature and ease-of-use facilitates the effortless extraction of financial and operational information required for Value Stream Mapping (VSM).

SYSPRO's Inventory module is a synchronized hub providing a consolidated view of all stock locations and those activities that impact inventory optimization and customer service levels, as well as the end-to-end elements of costs and lead times. Features such as Pareto and obsolescence analysis can assist in identifying those products that are suitable for VSM focus, while SYSPRO modules such as Engineering Change Control, Bills of Material, Work-in Progress and Factory Scheduling facilitate the evaluation of targets for kaizen programs, such as reduction in design and manufacturing costs, cycle times, queues and setups.

SYSPRO's powerful inspection, serial tracking and lot traceability functionality aid in the identification and tracking of the source of defects, thereby enabling the implementation of kaizen initiatives towards the principle of 'Quality at the source'.

The queries and reports in Work in Progress enable you to quickly assess the statuses, inventories and costs associated with work in progress, and provide metrics on utilization, efficiency, scrap and rework, while customer and supplier delivery performance metrics are provided by the Sales Order and Purchase Order and Inventory Optimization modules.

SYSPRO's Inventory and Bills of Material modules enable the modelling of the LEAN techniques of batch size and setup reduction on costs, lead time and inventory. SYSPRO's Factory Scheduling provides graphical tools to assist you in optimizing scheduling and sequencing processes, to reduce setup and overall lead time, and improve manufacturing flexibility and sale-to-customer flow. This, along with the inventory optimization and production planning features, enables you to refine the pace of production to match the pace of sales. Furthermore, features such as sales order/job/purchase-order linking facilitate the electronic implementation of true pull supply- chain processes where appropriate.

Document Flow Manager and SYSPRO e.net Solutions enable you, not only to automate resource and time-intensive processes such as order processing, but also to handle increased volumes from global customers. By providing the capability for 24/7 order taking and acknowledgment, they improve lead time, and free up staff to perform other value-adding tasks. Furthermore, SYSPRO's XML-aware solutions enable version-independent integration with best-of-breed shop floor monitoring and control systems.

The system's sophisticated reporting and analytics tools enable user-defined reports and queries, while SYSPRO Workflow Services enable the creation of efficient workflows to implement business rules and standardize business processes. Electronic Signatures and automation tools enable the automatic raising of alerts, triggers and events based on user-defined criteria, thereby aiding prompt problem solving and process improvement.

SYSPRO's flexible integrated features and best-practice focus give you single-point visibility and control, providing support for the implementation of your LEAN initiatives.

SYSPRO's Forecasting module gives you the tools to help you forecast future demand, based on seasonal, cyclical and trend demand patterns in your sales history and lost-sales data, thereby enabling you to plan your production and purchasing to meet these requirements.

A powerful Pareto analysis feature enables you to easily identify fast, slow and obsolete items in terms of sales value, gross profit, cost of sales, quantities sold or hits, so you can make decisions about which items to forecast, and the best method to use for each.
You can choose to create forecasts at stock code/warehouse level, and if the Families and Grouping module is installed, you can aggregate your forecasts into user-defined groupings. A variety of forecast calculation methods are available, including the competition method, and the module also provides facilities to track the forecast quality.

Additionally, you can select to manually forecast items which require market intelligence, while selecting to batch forecast all other items, and filters and adjustments can be applied to sales history to account for outliers and other abnormalities.

Multi-level analysis of product performance is available, including at stock code, warehouse, product class, supplier, planner and buyer levels, as well as at user-defined group level if the Families and Groupings module is installed.

The approved forecast becomes the demand input to SYSPRO's Material Requirements Planning system. This gives your planners and buyers visibility to the resources and actions required to meet the demand in the short, medium and long term.

While forecasting is, by definition, an inexact science, its purpose is to improve the quality of predictions and thereby enable the fine-tuning of the balance between supply and demand. In forecasting environments where product ranges and configurations are extensive, bills of material are complex and raw material and component lead times are long, improved forecast accuracy is essential to minimizing inventory holding and obsolescence costs without compromising customer service and brand loyalty.

SYSPRO provides tools to enable you to track and evaluate your forecasts, as well as to identify the possible causes of forecast errors. These tools assist you in optimizing your forecasts to produce the best possible outcome with minimum forecast error. The Inventory Optimization suite of modules enables the entry of manual forecasts, as well as the automatic generation of forecasts via a variety of forecast algorithms, including those that compute for trends, seasonality and cyclical events. In addition, the module provides a competition forecasting method (also known as focus forecasting or the tournament method) which attempts to select the most suitable forecast algorithm, based on a selected error measurement and your SYSPRO sales history data. This enables you to compare results to determine which method is the most suitable for any particular item, whether you forecast products at code, revision, release, or warehouse level. A tracking signal is used to indicate when the validity of the forecast might be in doubt; those items with high forecast errors are highlighted and can be reviewed and adjusted as required.

Forecast accuracy depends not only on the regular evaluation of the forecast error, but also on the integrity and nature of the source data. In SYSPRO, forecast accuracy is enhanced through the ability to automatically filter and adjust outliers, as well as to manually adjust forecast base data for quantitative and qualitative factors. Lost sales can also be included in the demand profile.

Furthermore, SYSPRO's proxy functionality enables the forecasting of new products based on the sales history of similar superseded products which is useful in industries where product life cycles are short.

Besides enabling you to easily extract regular KPI, financial and operational information in a variety of formats, software analysis and reporting tools should help you to identify possible market trends, as well as opportunities to up-sell, cross-sell and create value-added services that can help you grow your business.

Whether you need to provide customers, suppliers and executive management with professional reports via the internet, or operational staff with decision-support data, SYSPRO's Enterprise Performance Management suite gives you visibility to related information across your business, on multiple dimensions from local and remote locations. It includes a variety of powerful analysis tools such as Executive Dashboards, Cash Flow Forecast, SYSPRO Analytics and Financial Ratios.

Constant innovation is a key factor to remaining competitive, and on-going research and development into new and better products is integral to the industry. Short product life cycles mean the speed with which you deliver these innovations to the market is imperative to remaining competitive and profitable. SYSPRO's integrated nature and powerful functionality enable you to streamline and track the changes to product designs and costings, as well as to improve the delivery of customer-driven product designs and configurations.

The rules-based Product Configurator enables non-technical staff to rapidly generate accurate product specifications for highly customizable products, thereby helping to reduce lead times and improve the speed and accuracy of order processing in configure-to-order environments. It facilitates the automatic generation of factory orders and purchase orders, with all the relevant detail such as materials and operations required to make or assemble the correct customer-specific configuration of the product. It mitigates the need for manual input or additional bills of materials to cover all product permutations and drastically reduces the margin for input errors. New permutations may be saved for future orders, making it easy to recall at order entry time.

For complete engineer- and design-to-order requirements, SYSPRO speeds the processing of product inquiries through its estimating and quotations functionality, with estimating providing an accurate view of both standard and non-standard material and labor costs, ensuring accurate profitability projection and quoting.

SYSPRO's e.net Solutions, multimedia and import facilities enable the rapid incorporation and processing of customer design data, such as drawings and CAD specifications, further improving turnaround time. Furthermore, SYSPRO's powerful factory scheduling features enable you to quote accurate lead times and delivery dates, based on capacity and existing loads. Once a quote is accepted by the customer, the conversion to a factory order is a simple automated process. SYSPRO's Engineering Change Control (ECC) enables you to apply strict control and uniformity over your design-to-market processes by providing an integrated rules-based electronic workflow system with full version control, security and auditable history. ECC gives you the tools to record and track product design and process changes, assess the impact of these changes on costs and associated data, and control the change routing and approval processes.

SYSPRO provides an integrated view of the development-to-market processes, thus facilitating improved communication between all participants.

To enable you to fine-tune the balance between supply and demand, SYSPRO provides technology and features that afford visibility to integrated supply chain intelligence and facilitate close monitoring of performance risks. SYSPRO fosters informed decision-making, thereby helping you to meet the challenges of supply chain management and synchronization in a dynamic and complex global environment.

SYSPRO's Inventory Optimization enables the configuration and automated monitoring of KPIs for different nodes in the supply chain, to facilitate the balancing of inventory investment and service. Key elements that drive inventory, such as forecasts, lead times, supplier performance and service levels, are coordinated, tracked and controlled to determine risk, evaluate supplier reliability and calculate optimal safety stocks. This in turn enables the modeling and formulation of more accurate target inventories and appropriate inventory policies, as well as better planning and execution of production, procurement and distribution activities.

Engineering change control promotes a cohesive collaborative approach to product life cycle management with your contract manufacturers; Blanket Sales Orders provides the means to reconcile schedules with your OEM clients, while Distribution Requirements Planning enables optimization of replenishment planning in a distributed warehouse environment.

Production schedule visibility and agility is facilitated through SYSPRO Factory Scheduling, which provides graphical scheduling and sequencing; control methods range from manual manipulation through to true algorithm-based advanced planning and scheduling (APS).

Your larger trading partners may look increasingly to closer electronic collaboration to cut production timetables, speed order processing, reduce margin for error and minimize disruption to their businesses. SYSPRO's internet- and XML-based technologies facilitate the implementation of your collaborative commerce strategies, enabling you to share, process and deliver information securely and efficiently within an extended global supply chain.

SYSPRO provides the means to build service orientated architecture (SOA), enabling flexible version-independent options for integrated web-enabled applications and mobile devices. The system facilitates streamlined, secure electronic data interchange and collaborative commerce through features such as Document Flow Manager, SYSPRO e.net Solutions, Office Automation and Messaging, and various business-to-business import and export functions.

The Web Applications are out-the-box solutions which you can customize to suit end-user requirements. Executive Dashboards provide supply chain managers with relevant KPIs at their fingertips while Event Management facilitates user-friendly configuration of alerts for operational and financial exceptions. Powerful VBScripting and customization features enable flexible views of SYSPRO data, as well as the incorporation of data displays from external systems, in a secure environment.

SYSPRO Office Integration (SOI) facilitates direct secure queries of key operational data from the desktops of enterprise-wide users and trading partners, without the need for the desktop installation or licensing of SYSPRO. Using a Microsoft Office product such as Word or Excel, the user can extract information from SYSPRO directly into the current Office document as text or tables. This connectivity means you can allow customers and suppliers direct access to relevant information in your organization. These powerful features, along with SYSPRO's multi-lingual and multi-currency functionality, promote true global visibility and flow of supply chain information.

SYSPRO provides additional functionality that helps you automate and manage an extended supply chain which may involve participants such as contract manufacturers, distributors and retailers: Trade Promotions Management provides extensive product promotion and pricing flexibility and improved management of deductions and rebates for your dealings with large retailers; and Return Merchandise affords efficient processing, tracking and analysis of customer returns and complaints.

SYSPRO Workflow Services enable you to streamline the execution of your supply chain processes in a consistent coherent flow. By leveraging SYSPRO's powerful technology and features, you can optimize the visibility, communication and exchange of information across your supply chain.

SYSPRO enables the time-phased planning and execution of both dependent and independent component replenishment, as well as the efficient management of component issues to production.

The system's component to-operation linking facility, on both standard and non-standard product bills of material, as well its order policy, lot sizing and dynamic lead time functionality, ensures that automatic replenishment calculations for dependent demand satisfy quantity and date requirements. Independent demand for spares is also catered for through the use of SYSPRO's multi-level MPS and forecasting functionality. Inventory order-point indicators, such as reorder point, minimum/maximum levels and safety stock, provide the tools for other replenishment-planning approaches which may be better suited to optimizing inventory in your environment.

SYSPRO enables the quick review and execution of suggested actions for component purchasing and production, using either the Requirements Calculation or trial kitting criteria as a source. For make-to-order and engineer-to-order environments, sales order-to-job linking, purchase order-to-job linking and the bill-of-jobs features enable the automatic raising and linking of component requirements for a customer order line. Extensive purchase order and blanket purchase order functionality, as well as SYSPRO's electronic collaboration tools ensure fast and secure communication of orders to suppliers around the globe.

SYSPRO's Multi-level Trial Kitting program enables you to quickly check that you have all components required for a standard part, job or bill of jobs before issuing any materials or launching a job onto production and if not, where shortages exist. The Kit Issues program determines the exact issues required for a user-defined range of job operations, thereby helping to avoid cluttering the production area with unnecessary component inventory. Where production runs are short and work-in-progress control is not required, SYSPRO's backflushing enables you to issue components used, on receipt of the parent product.

SYSPRO's where-used query and replace facilities enable seamless replacement of one component with another throughout relevant bills of material, while the Engineering Change Control module enables full version and release level management of this process if required.

Critical to continuous improvement strategies is the reduction of overall product lead time to enable companies to be more agile and responsive to unpredictable and changing customer demands. Identifying and reducing the number and severity of manufacturing bottlenecks is crucial to any lead time reduction strategy. SYSPRO's Work in Progress module provides tracking of expected versus actual operation times, assisting you in identifying bottleneck patterns and inaccurate demonstrated capacity estimates.

Where nothing can be done to remove short-term bottlenecks, management of production schedules to take account of them is critical to optimizing your production resources and providing realistic order delivery dates. SYSPRO Factory Scheduling provides one-click highlighting of bottleneck operations on existing schedules, as well as what-if scheduling and sequencing to optimize utilization of available production resources.

SYSPRO's Inventory Optimization and Forecasting modules enable you to minimize forecast error and manage seasonality, thereby helping you to reduce your inventory investment, and improve order fulfilment performance. This is further enhanced by features such as Available-to-promise and various time fence indicators, which give sales and production staff a reliable view of what they can promise to customers and when.

SYSPRO's Material Requirements Planning gives you clear visibility to the integrated effect of current and future supply and demand, thereby enabling you to make better purchasing and production decisions and reduce excess and obsolete inventories. The inclusion of sources of supply and demand is configurable and various reports and related review programs enable easy potential oversupplies and seamless execution of suggested actions. In addition, order policies by stock code at warehouse level enable you to implement lot-sizing rules for purchased and manufactured items.

In make-to-order environments, where a full material requirements planning run may not be required, features such as Advanced Trial Kitting provide full visibility to replenishment requirements for multi or single-level jobs. The purchase order to job link enables purchased or subcontracted materials to be receipted directly into specific jobs.

Standard reports such as the Inventory Exception and the MRP Potential Oversupplies report help you identify excess inventories and possible problems with your lot-sizing techniques.