Right Person, Right Info, Right Time

We’ve established that we need to empower the people who
really power the plants. The challenge of business systems, then,
is to bring just the accurate and timely information needed by each
individual to make their next decision and the actions that follow,
better – whatever information that may be, for each specific
job function and department. 

Sounds reasonable, so in my next free blog postings, I’m going to
dig into a few examples to better explore who needs what kinds of
information, and the types of manufacturing improvements that can
result from the right person having access to the right
information, at the right time. 

Example #1: Customer Sales and Service

The success of the plant has to begin and end with the ability to
serve customers, while providing a profitable return on investment
to shareholders. So if I’m a customer service representative
and focus on handling customer sales requests, my customers depend
on me to know everything about them before I pick up the phone -
their preferences, what they’ve ordered before, the prices
and discounts and terms of sale that have been promised for the
next order or for every order over the next few months, their
special service requests, product quality expectations, and what
current commitments for sales deliveries, returns, credits and
allowances are already in motion between our two
companies. 

For today’s manufacturers, it’s enterprise
ERP and CRM business applications
that retain and recall trade history, forecast future sales demand,
and remind us of our ongoing terms of partnership with each and
every customer, in spite of the increasing volume of business,
numbers of customers, and the accelerated speed of business - every
time there’s some new demand-based sales business to
transact.   

So how can business systems help customer service representatives
provide even higher levels of service, given the increasingly
competitive marketplace manufacturers now face? It’s when the
unexpected starts to occur more often, when the
current demand/supply picture sees
frequent changes from both sides of the trading
partner relationship, when customers ask for and
even demand an extra level of service –
that’s when business systems need to provide even greater
levels of support, for the people on the phone, and for the
continued success of the business.

Manufacturers are looking for ways to provide customers with
innovative new products and
services offerings, as a way of differentiating
themselves, while also being paid for perfect order
performance. And they depend on enterprise business
solutions like ERP to empower their people
to successfully promise and deliver on this
vision.

• This includes being able to sell, make, and deliver both
  standard forecast products at standard prices, as well as custom,
  make to order products with relative premium price
  levels. 
• It means being able to market, sell, produce, deliver, and get
  paid for tiered levels of quality for a product, across multiple
  brands or within a single product and brand. This includes being
  able to match a customer’s specified quality requirements
  against existing product inventory, so that only product acceptable
  to the customer can be selected for shipment.
• It includes the ability to market and sell both
  products and value-add services, and to imbed the level of
  service commitment within each individual sales order and sales
  order line, to insure customers always receive what they pay
  for.
• Being able to offer value-add services is an area that’s
  going to see continued growth and opportunity for manufacturers.
  For example, being able to commit to accelerated delivery lead
  times is something that customers ask for every day, but
  isn’t as easy to imbed into the rest of the plant as you
  might think. In this case, being able to manage an exception like
  faster turnaround for sales shipment can actually make
  manufacturers more money.
  Unfortunately, premium pricing of a common product with an
  accelerated ship date isn’t all that visible beyond Sales,
  especially in an automated business system. How does a premium
  service, premium price sales order find its way through Planning,
  Scheduling, Production, Warehousing, and Shipping operations, all
  the while retaining its priority status? This is a common
  requirement of process industry manufacturers that ERP must be able
  to address.
• One last example of an added level of service for the customer
  is the ability to proactively manage unexpected changes in supply.
  This can happen when product equipment fails, or the quality of a
  key ingredient is too low to use, or a delivery truck won’t
  arrive on time because of weather or road conditions beyond the
  manufacturer’s control. 

  In each of these exception conditions, it’s people who will
  need to have enough real-time information to evaluate their
  options, and make the best choice for the customer, while
  protecting the investments and commitments of the
  manufacturer.  Imbedding best practices and business rules in
  ERP can help people make the best choices possible, in a timely
  manner that allows for positive response, based on the policies of
  the company. This can extend to notifying other trading partners,
  i.e. customers, suppliers, etc. of the updated decisions and new
  commitments, as soon as possible.

In the next entry, I’ll move on to another department in the
plant, to better understand what people need to meet today’s
challenges around the factory, to power the plant.