Manufacturing ERP Modules — Basic + Advanced

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is a type of digital solution that helps manage various business processes and operations using a centralized service. It automates processes and serves as a shared database. Using cross-system pipelines, an ERP system with the baseline functionality can fetch financial and operational information.

Manufacturing ERP modules exchange data and commands with the core ERP solution. The integration of new modules helps enrich the baseline functionality of a system.

Each module is designed to perform individual actions. The composition of manufacturing modules in an ERP system is custom for each solution and is defined by business needs and processes. 

As per statistics, 97% of manufacturing businesses use custom-built ERP systems. They are composed of diverse modules that are aligned with business needs.

The most widespread ERP modules for the manufacturing industry include the following.

BASIC ERP MANUFACTURING MODULES

The baseline manufacturing ERP software modules are the most commonly integrated. They help provide visibility of the most crucial processes and operations.

1. Inventory Management

The module integration enables raw materials and manufactured product tracking. Real-time inventory management is enabled by automated barcode and UDI scanning. It helps monitor inventory levels, get real-time updates on work-in-progress, and get alerts of out-of-stock materials.

Module key features:

• UDI scanning
• stock replenishment alerts
• item tracing
• inventory processes analysis

Module implementation impact: Inventory visibility and accurate demand forecasting. Also, the module helps reduce stockout and excess inventory by enabling analyzing processes, monitoring, and manufacturing process optimization.

2. Production Planning and Management

Production process design and activities scheduling. Besides, the manufacturing ERP module helps monitor the resource consumption and production processes. The module enables the opportunity to check, set, and update machine programs.

Module key features:

• machine program administration
• production scheduling
• manufacturing capacity planning
• batch management

Module implementation impact: Enables the opportunity to coordinate manufacturing processes by controlling machine programs. The module implication helps achieve reduced expenses by optimizing production processes and resource utilization.

3. Procurement

Fully control and automate the raw material and product acquisition. The module offers centralized access to information about vendors, quotes, resource availability, delivery time, and other crucial details. Create automated material replenishment orders creation and manage them.

Module key features:

• vendor management
• order processing and update
• contract management
• automation replenishment agents
• analytics

Module implementation impact: Lowered material costs thanks to efficient supplier management. Also, the module implementation helps reduce administrative burden by enabling automated replenishment and vendor-managed inventory management.

4. Sales and Order Management

Top-to-bottom management of sales administration. Track all the payments, issues invoices, handle returns/refunds, and track order assembly and completion progress. The automation implication helps streamline sales and item distribution processes.

Module key features:

• leads and transactions tracking
• pricing and discount management
• promotion code issuing and management
• inventory availability check
• order fulfillment and tracking
• invoice and billing management

Module implementation impact: Fast and error-free order fulfillment, management, and tracking. Enhanced order completion visibility with the integration with shipping companies. Operational efficiency is enabled by full sales and order fulfillment transparency.

5. Human Resources (HR)

Manage digital records on employee-related processes to orchestrate manufacturing processes. The manufacturing ERP module foresees the opportunity to manage roles, responsibilities, compensation, and time off.

Module key features:

• employee information update
• payroll and tax data management
• schedule arrangement and update
• time off management
• compensation administration

Module implementation impact: Helps automate HR processes and synchronize data with other systems. It results in improved employee satisfaction and reduced administrative burden achieved through workflow optimization.

6. Financial Management

The module is responsible for managing financial operations, transactions, quotes, invoices, etc. Moreover, it helps analyze all the financial data, summarize it, and compose customized reports for supporting decision-making.

Module key features:

• accounting and charting
• invoice review
• cash flow management
• financial planning and forecasting
• custom report creation

Module implementation impact: The module enabled real-time visibility of the financial processes. It helps consolidate data from multiple departments and automates burdening administrative processes. The implications of top-tier technologies help enable data-baked forecasting.

7. Warehouse Management

Control operations for efficient utilization of storage space. Stakeholders can enable centralized facility maintenance and item handling using the manufacturing ERP module.

Module key features:

• inventory tracking and picking
• storage space management
• picking and packing control
• storage environment management

Module implementation impact: The module usage helps achieve smart resource allocation and workflow optimization. It results in enhanced order fulfillment. The implementation of smart devices helps reduce the amount of manual input required for warehouse management.

ADVANCED ERP MODULES FOR MANUFACTURING

Advanced manufacturing modules in ERP help enable additional functionality. They help automate workflows and reduce administrative burden.

1. Quality Management

The module enables continuous monitoring of the quality of produced items. It helps integrate quality control practices into existing production workflows. Furhtermore, it helps ensure that clients receive defect-free products and match established quality standards.

Module key features:

• automated defect identification
• standard compliance check
• continuous product quality assessment

Module implementation impact: Continuous quality monitoring check helps achieve improved product quality. It results in a minimized chance of recalls and returns. Besides, the module enables tracking defects and root causes of production flaws.

2. Supply Chain Management

The comprehensive control and monitoring of the flow of materials and manufactured products. The information includes data about suppliers, contractors, distributors, retailers, and consumers. The manufacturing ERP module helps develop and optimize supply chain strategies, track inventory levels, forecast demand, trace shipping, etc.

Module key features:

• supplier management
• procurement strategy development
• demand planning
• inventory and warehouse management
• shipment tracking
• distributor management
• supply chain analytics.

Module implementation impact: The module enables full visibility and control of materials sourcing, inventory holding, and product distribution. It helps analyze supply chain workflows and optimize processes. Also, the module enables data analysis and demand forecasting to avoid inventory stockouts and overstocking.

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Manage interactions with customers and prospective clients. Build trusted relationships with customers and make custom offers to increase sales. Gather feedback to improve marketing strategies and sales funnels.

Module key features:

• customer service management
• custom pricing strategies
• sales and marketing activities analysis
• automation of lead generation and management
• customer interaction tracking and analysis

Module implementation impact: Manufacturers can enable personalized customer interactions using the module. Besides, optimizing lead generation and management strategies helps increase return on investments (ROI).

4. Maintenance Management

Optimize manufacturing efficiency by enabling predictive maintenance and reducing equipment downtime. Create well-thought-out machine repair and maintenance plans to minimize production downtime.

Module key features:

• machine maintenance scheduling
• equipment data analysis
• asset management
• spare parts and expendable materials management

Module implementation impact: Scheduled equipment maintenance helps reduce line downtime. The analysis of data collected by sensors helps identify anomalies and predict possible equipment failures in advance.

5. Business Intelligence

The business intelligence (BI) manufacturing ERP module analyzes large amounts of data and extracts insights. It provides access to custom tools for visualizing data collected from machines and generating custom reports.

Module key features:

• data collection and analysis
• charting and visualization
• report generation
• predictive analytics and data forecasting
• dashboard creation

Module implementation impact: The module implication helps stakeholders to make data-baked decisions. It enables access to insights and real-time data using a dashboard. The BI helps optimize processes and cut expenses by defining bottlenecks, problem root causes, and anomalies.

6. Workflow Management

Enable full visibility and control of business and production processes. Build data pipelines and automate processes to optimize workflows. The module integration helps stakeholders assign tasks and track the progress of completion seamlessly.

Module key features:

• workflow design
• task management
• cross-system integrations and data sharing
• reporting
• notifications

Module implementation impact: The ability to examine and adjust workflows helps eliminate bottlenecks and optimize production performance. Besides, the module usage is useful for enabling cross-department coordination and repetitive task automation.

7. Marketing

This manufacturing ERP module is useful for running and optimizing marketing campaigns. It helps collect and analyze the outcomes of marketing activities. Hence, businesses spend their budgets more effectively, targeting the most relevant audiences.

Module key features:

• marketing campaign management
• lead management
• email marketing
• social media management

Module implementation impact: Detailed analysis of marketing activities helps cut costs and improve lead generation. The centralized data access helps manage multiple marketing campaigns, applying diverse strategies to find the most optimal ones.

BENEFITS OF MANUFACTURING ERP MODULES

The top five ERP modules benefits for manufacturing companies are listed below.

As per the research, the average answer confidence rate for the benefits listed below is 75.45%, which is higher than the minimum required rate of 60%.

Reduced Operational Costs

The implication of manufacturing ERP software modules is business management to optimize processes, enable automation, and increase performance. It results in reduced operational costs, including:

• traveling and communication cost
• staff/employee cost
• product delivery cost
• inventory cost
• maintenance cost

Optimized Production Cycling

Using basic and advanced manufacturing modules in ERP software, businesses manage to enable full workflow visibility. It enables the opportunity to identify points of growth and bottlenecks to eliminate. 

The top processes optimized by EPR manufacturing modules implementation include the following:

• production
• stock procurement 
• report generation
• data preparation
• order checking
• debt payment

Improved Data Quality

Automated data collection and analysis help improve the quality of information. Using established data-sharing pipelines helps reduce loss or unobserved data transformation. As per interviewed stakeholders, the usage of ERP manufacturing modules helps:

• reduce the risk of price miscalculation
• prevent data loss
• eliminate the risk of inputting incorrect data
• increase the accuracy of data

Enhanced Customer Service

Optimized processes help deliver top-tier customer services. The usage of ERP modules for manufacturing helps eliminate the risk of selling out-of-stock products. Also, they enable the opportunity to offer custom-centric services, including personalized pricing strategies and custom order delivery. 

The core outcomes of enhanced customer service are defined as the following:

• reduced order cancellation
• minimized the number of order issues
• improved customer satisfaction
• leveling with customers' needs

Continuous Business Improvement

Using manufacturing ERP modules helps businesses achieve continuous business process improvement by unlocking new opportunities. ERP modules also help improve awareness and collaboration between departments.

The top four continuous business improvements highlighted by stakeholders are:

• job function restructuring
• improved knowledge sharing
• ease of data analysis
• increased employee satisfaction

ERP MODULE IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES

The implementation of manufacturing modules in ERP is related to challenges that may occur. The three most widespread challenges and solutions are as follows.

Compatibility Issues

The boundaries set by legacy software may affect the ability to implement ERP manufacturing modules. Hence, implementing selected modules may require additional ERP software adjustments or middleware development.

How to overcome this challenge: Conduct a technical review of the existing ERP software for manufacturing to determine the specifications that should be met when selecting a new ERP module.

Workflow Adjustment

Integrating new manufacturing ERP modules requires stakeholders to reengineer existing processes and workflows. It results in the disruption of workflows and unplanned downtime caused by the lack of new instructions.

How to overcome this challenge: Analyze existing business workflows and outline all the changes caused by new module implementation. Prepare a detailed transition plan that includes roles and responsibilities during the ERP model integration. Also, prepare and present new workflows to your team in advance.

Data Inconsistency

Machines and systems generate data in different formats, causing unification challenges when implementing new manufacturing business modules. Hence, businesses need to develop and integrate additional data mapping tools for integrating new modules and building data-sharing pipelines.

How to overcome this challenge: Analyze the existing ERP software for a manufacturing company and define data integrity requirements. Establish strict data validation, transformation, and synchronization protocols before implementing new manufacturing modules in ERP software. 

FEATURED INFORMATION FOR C-LEVELS

The implementation of manufacturing ERP modules helps boost operational efficiency and enable AI-driven analytics. The key insights include the following.

• 83% have already implemented enterprise resource and production planning modules
• 97% of businesses use custom-built or customized ERP manufacturing solutions
• 81% say that an ERP system is an essential component for running business operations
• 48% of manufacturers already use cloud-based ERP solutions
• 32% experienced challenges with making EPR systems live
• 43% noticed improved reporting and analytics
• 16.5% is the average costs cut

CASE STUDY

Curious about how CodeIT tackles real-world challenges in the manufacturing industry? Dive into the details of one of our successful projects below.

Problem

A manufacturing company with a 30-year experience is needed to modernize the production. Stakeholders experienced a lack of real-time visibility of all the manufacturing processes. The client requested our team to develop a machine uptime monitoring system with custom features. Moreover, we had to integrate the developed solution into the existing manufacturing execution software.

Solution

We've analyzed the technical requirements provided by the client and created a detailed solution implementation plan. Our team has developed the front-end and back-end machine uptime monitoring software comprising the following components:

• Dashboard. A web application that offers access to crucial information about the shop floor. All the data is updated in real time.
• Data visualization. The data collected from machines is pre-processed and displayed in the form of charts.
• Report generation. Users can generate custom reports to track defined metrics upon demand.
• Machine status viewer. Authorized users can track the status and programs of selected machines.
• System permission configuration. The admin users can set custom data access permission for selected roles.

The developed software has been integrated into the existing manufacturing execution system.

Intrigued by the journey behind the product? Dive into the case study.

CONCLUSION

The integration of manufacturing ERP modules helps enable additional functionality of enterprise resource planning systems. There is a wide variety of industry-specific ERP modules that can be integrated.

Basic ERP manufacturing modules:

• Inventory Management
• Production Planning and Management
• Procurement
• Sales and Order Management
• Human Resources (HR)
• Financial Management
• Warehouse Management

Advanced ERP manufacturing modules:

• Quality management
• Supply chain management
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Maintenance management
• Business intelligence
• Workflow management
• Marketing