ERP for the Shop Floor

With hundreds of ERP systems on the market, small machine shops should focus on finding the right features to solve their shop floor challenges.

Using tablets and computers connected to ProShop’s ERP system directly on the shop floor, managers and operators have work orders and production data right at their fingertips. Photo courtesy of ProShop ERP.

Integrating enterprise resource planning (ERP) software into any machine shop can be disruptive. But it should be. A good ERP system has the power to transform every aspect of a business into a well-oiled machine. However, not all businesses are created equal, and what a large production facility is looking for in an ERP system is not going to be the same as a small made-to-order machine shop. There are a few considerations that manufacturers must explore before they foray into the world of ERP systems.

THE RIGHT FIT

When first investigating ERP systems, many shops are focused on functions and features. And, although these elements are an important part of the decision-making process, a few questions need to be answered before exploring the bells and whistles.

“The first step [customers] often miss is validating pain points,” said Jean Magny, president of Genius Solutions, Montreal. “They need to ask, What are we trying to solve? Too many times customers don’t know what they are trying to fix or what their specific needs are. They look at many demos and, in the end, they are all confused.”

To get around this, it is important for shops to be in alignment with management about what problems can be solved and explore what possible challenges could be solved in the future. It’s not just about integrating the latest software and hoping it will solve all your problems. It’s about finding a solution to current and upcoming challenges to help strengthen and grow all aspects of the business.

“You’d be surprised, but when we ask a customer, What are you trying to achieve? they respond by saying they are trying to buy an ERP system,” said Magny. “But they don’t have a clear goal in mind for why they need the system or how it will effectively function within their business.”

A shop’s maturity and team composition need to be considered when exploring ERP software. Does your shop have a dedicated IT department? This is especially important for smaller shops. Some products out there may be too complicated for a small shop without an IT department and may require adding staff to maintain the ERP system.

“On-premise, installed software can be difficult software to install and main-tain yourself, requiring constant software updates and IT burden,” said Paul Van Metre, co-founder and vice president of sales, ProShop ERP, Vancouver. “Customers that don’t have dedicated IT staff may be better off using a web- or cloud-based subscription platform where they don’t need to do a lot of configuring. They can implement the software without local IT staff. It’s as easy as using any web-based tool. However, web-based, paperless systems do require more computers on the shop floor to maximize efficiencies.”

FUNCTIONS AND FEATURES

With ERP software, machine shops can take advantage of many features to improve work flow on the shop floor. However, according to Van Metre, most ERP systems aren’t typically designed for machines shops.

“They don’t offer enough features for what machine shops need to do daily,” he explained. “Machine shops are expected to keep track of important things separately outside of the system. General things to look for include tracking and managing orders, scheduling, purchasing, and job costing. But beyond that, there are some things that I think are most essential to machine shops: tracking machine utilization, visual and paperless work instruction on the shop floor, and performing inspection. You need to inspect your parts to make sure they are good. Most systems don’t allow you to do that.”

It’s all well and good to have strong ERP functions, but if you are not able to track and intimately manage quality and you are making bad parts, then it’s all for naught. When it comes to quality, Van Metre focuses on two areas: inspection and quality management systems (QMS). Ensuring that work flow includes inspection processes as needed is key, but having an entire QMS integrated into the ERP can help companies achieve and maintain certifications like ISO and AS9100.

Glider Guard Die and Mould Inc. incorporated a Genius ERP system into its Oldcastle, Ont.-based shop. Glider Guard’s Brenn Cox discusses his machine shop floor needs with Nicolas Morin, vice president of professional services at Genius Solutions. Photo courtesy of Genius ERP.

“Generally, ERP systems don’t get deep into inspection and quality, and if they do, it’s more of a storage space to house all the documents,” said Van Metre. “We think this is a pretty big void.”

Another feature Van Metre highlights is cutting tool management. Cutting tools are an integral part of what machine shops work with on a regular basis. For ProShop, this was a feature it saw lacking in the market when it ran its own shop for years. A system that can track and manage cutting tools on the shop floor will help increase productivity and drive a machine shop’s success. This lack of capability in the market was one factor that led ProShop to build its own ERP system from scratch.

“Manufacturing is in great shape today, which means people are busy,” said Magny. “It really goes back to what you are trying to solve and what benefit gains you expect to see. Choose the features that will help these issues, and in a couple of months when you have other bottlenecks or challenges, you can flip the switch and explore other modules/features.”

DATA-DRIVEN MANUFACTURING

For small shops focusing on one-offs and made-to-order parts, finding a system that includes a very tight scheduling feature is necessary.

“Typically, when you manufacture in [a production] environment ... scheduling is obvious because you are always producing the same parts,” explained Magny. “The time it takes to manufacture the part at each machine is well known. If you are making 1,000 of the same part, you will know exactly how much time it takes on the lathe or CNC machine.”

This can be a challenge for small shops, and incorporating scheduling on the shop floor is not just a matter of plug-and-play. When it comes to accurately scheduling, the data must be there—all workers must be using the ERP system and reliable data must be collected from the shop floor.

“The big challenge is that if a shop doesn’t have a way to track time and consumption on each job, even with the best scheduling system, they are stuck,” Magny added. “Scheduling uses data to forecast how the plant will react to availability, capacity, and delivery. If the numbers you have are not good, then the system will calculate perfectly the wrong answer.”

Data collection is also important to provide to all areas of a business; both management and shop floor workers should have access to the most up-to-date information. According to Van Metre, people in the office need to be able to see the exact status of a job, when it is expected to finish, and when it can be shipped to the customer (customers are always calling and inquiring about their order). Any system should be able to tell you easily the status of any job. And paperless systems have a built-in advantage in providing real-time information.

Yet, shop floor visibility is also essential. Magny admitted that not enough shops are sharing data with the entire team and staff. It’s not enough for just managers to have visibility on the job.

“Companies that share that visibility have more success,” said Magny. “Staff on the floor should be involved in the sharing of their progress and solution solving. If some-thing goes wrong, shop floor workers can see where it occurred and if they are part of the issue, can work to be part of the solution.”

ProShop ERP can track and manage cutting tools on the shop floor, helping to increase productivity and drive a machine shop’s success. Photo courtesy of ProShop ERP

MAKING CHIPS MEANS MAKING MONEY

The goal of many shops looking to integrate an ERP system is to minimize non-value-added time. A machine that is sitting idle waiting for a worker to prepare an end mill for the upcoming job is not optimizing efficiency.

“You want to go from the last job you finished, take it off the machine as quick as possible, and immediately put everything into the machine that you need for the next job and hit the cycle start button as fast as you can,” said Van Metre. “Features integrated into the ERP that allow companies to execute additional activities like tooling prep, material prep, inspection, and even just getting everything in order and walking through the process in advance can make all the difference. A system should be able to forecast what the job requires to ensure everything needed is available in-house.”

It’s common for machine shops that don’t have very good control of their systems, to set up a job and then realize that they don’t have everything they need. The machine then sits idle until they can get what is needed. Van Metre said that with some of the forecasting features, check lists can be generated of all the tools and materials required for a job, allowing workers to set up the machines in advance. Manufacturers can increase their spindle utilization just by being methodical, making sure the check list is filled out and tools and inspection equipment are available. With the decreased downtime, shops can focus on the increased capacity and throughput.

However, Magny pointed out that although ensuring a machine’s uptime is maximized is key, overscheduling a machine can also be a problem down the line. One machine may be constantly running, while another machine has a lineup of work-in-progress parts. It’s important to look at the whole picture, not just each individual machine.

“An ERP system is there to avoid these bottlenecks, but also to help better sched-ule tasks on machines while avoiding being stuck down the line,” he said.

DIGITAL TRENDS

With the rise of Industry 4.0 and the industrial internet of things (IIoT), more manu-facturers are capitalizing on this connected technology to better integrate an ERP system onto the shop floor. Van Metre points out that most people don’t think of ERP as a shop floor functionality—it’s great for the office, but they end up printing out the job travellers, and the shop floor work flow often remains unchanged. Machine shops looking to integrate ERP should take advantage of the functions and features designed specifically for shop floor visibility.

“IIoT and machine monitoring is certainly one way to get visibility on the shop floor,” said Van Metre. “The ERP system gets data directly from the machines, displaying the data and status of each machine. Machine monitoring software is generally separate from ERP. That is certainly an up-and-coming category for visibility on the shop floor, though. Having an ERP system with machine monitoring deeply integrated into it is the next step. Having tools to drive change to increase spindle uptime or decrease down-time between jobs, that’s where it really starts to matter.”

Associate Editor Lindsay Luminoso can be reached at lluminoso@canadianmetalworking.com.

Genius ERP, www.geniuserp.com

ProShop ERP, proshoperp.com/

About the Author
Canadian Metalworking / Canadian Fabricating & Welding

Lindsay Luminoso

Associate Editor

1154 Warden Avenue

Toronto, M1R 0A1 Canada

Lindsay Luminoso, associate editor, contributes to both Canadian Metalworking and Canadian Fabricating & Welding. She worked as an associate editor/web editor, at Canadian Metalworking from 2014-2016 and was most recently an associate editor at Design Engineering.

Luminoso has a bachelor of arts from Carleton University, a bachelor of education from Ottawa University, and a graduate certificate in book, magazine, and digital publishing from Centennial College.