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Cost-Effective Mass Customization Through Real-time Order Fulfillment
By Rich Cauthen
Managing Director, Supply Chain Consulting, Camstar Working with customers around the world is a given for many successful manufacturers, but operating on a global scale presents unique challenges. Regardless of location, customers seem to share the belief that a manufacturer halfway across the planet should provide the same service as a domestic supplier, and do so while delivering increasingly specialized products. These customers are not only demanding, they are also correct. Manufacturers must meet increasingly complex customer service requirements to remain competitive, and then surpass those expectations to rule their market space. That means regularly implementing innovative new strategies. As demand patterns shift toward mass product and service customization, one of the strategies most strongly affected is planning cycle management. Quickly fulfilling custom orders requires that the planning cycles for order fulfillment take place almost concurrently with manufacturing execution. This requires a coordinated effort between demand management, production planning, and the shop floor, based on accurate input to the planning process generated from real-time access to inventory, capacity, and demand data. Traditional manufacturing applications such as ERP and Inventory Management typically do not integrate information from other material management and plant floor systems. The result is often inaccurate input to the planning process. Without an accurate flow of information throughout the supply chain, into the planning process, and through plant floor execution, manufacturers will almost certainly suffer margin-eroding inefficiencies that render them unable to support complex requirements such as mass customization. Accurate and timely information have always been effective weapons for managing manufacturing complexity and adapting to changing needs, and supporting mass customization is no different. The key to architecting a successful planning solution hinges on integrating supply chain planning (SCP) with the real-time data available through a manufacturing execution system (MES). This integration facilitates a new capability known as Real-time Order Fulfillment, which helps manufacturers quickly and cost-effectively produce specialized products for global customers. Real-time Order Fulfillment synchronizes factories with the manufacturing supply chain, resulting in significant profitability improvements in build-to-order and assemble-to-order environments. Synchronizing these resources also promotes a lean manufacturing environment by eliminating waste in many forms, including inventory, time, activity, cost, and WIP. Eliminating waste reduces the time and cost between customer order acquisition and product shipment that is critical to cost-effectively addressing the mass customization market. To create a Real-time Order Fulfillment system, Adexa joined forces with Campbell, Calif.-based Camstar, the leading provider of enterprise MES solutions for global manufacturers. Camstar's InSite™ MES solution leverages live production information across the enterprise and supply chain, managing multiple manufacturing locations, processes, and companies as a single virtual factory. In the Real-time Order Fulfillment solution, Camstar's InSite MES manages and controls the production and fulfillment processes within individual factories by providing live work-in-process tracking, product genealogy, inventory visibility, parametric data collection, and out-of-limit event detection. This information is integrated with Adexa's eGPS planning solution suite, which creates a fully constrained production plan at both the supply chain and the factory level. The real-time linkage between the two applications is provided by Camstar's LiveConnect enterprise application integration product. Together, InSite™ and eGPS align order fulfillment and manufacturing systems to create a seamless information flow between the major business processes that comprise the order fulfillment cycle. As a result, optimal production plans are create using up-to-the-minute shop floor information on cycle times, yield rates, resource availability, and WIP. These plans are especially valuable in today's complex manufacturing environments, in which make-to-forecast (stock) strategies are mingled with postponement and assemble-to-order strategies, often on the same production resources. Leveraging the advantage of an open architecture and comprehensive solutions, Adexa and Camstar work with manufacturers to integrate real-time supply chain and production information into existing ERP systems. Together, these solutions synchronize complex processes across locations to create a highly efficient operation. Businesses that invest in Real-time Order Fulfillment can maximize ROI even under complex conditions such as mass customization. Benefits realized from Real-time Order Fulfillment include better customer service, maximum resource utilization, accelerated new product introduction, and lower inventory. In the future, it's hard to imagine any industry segment that won't be affected by mass customization and globalization. Whether planning and execution tools are in place or under consideration, an integrated planning and execution system can be the fastest route to maximum ROI. Manufacturers who combine lean manufacturing concepts with real-time planning and execution will define success in the era of mass customization. Camstar Systems, Inc., is an Adexa Technology Partner. For more information about Camstar, call 1-800-237-2841 or visit www.camstar.com. >>Next Article
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