Metal fabricators are facing more complexity and stiffer competition every day. How can you optimize resources across production in a way that reduces costs and improves profits? The key is to streamline information flow and decision-making across the enterprise using a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution designed specifically for the metals industry.
Resource Optimization
Let’s take a closer look at three powerful capabilities you will want to add to your metals business. All three are delivered by cloud-based ERP and highlight the power of connection when you link your front and back offices as well as your service center and production operations.
- Create Complete Work Orders
Production or work orders should include both material and labor. Modern cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions like RealSTEEL support building both an initial quote and a potential production order that looks at inventory, machine availability, labor costs, and more. Of course, that means the data across your business needs to be connected. Cloud-based ERP, with financial management at its core, centralizes your data and delivers it through robust reporting and personalized dashboards. When that data is unlocked from the old silos, the power of your digital transformation begins.
- Route and Track Jobs Automatically
It is critically important that work orders capture all of the actual activity as jobs are routed through production. This includes at a minimum:
- Material
- Labor
- Overhead
- Outside processing
A modern ERP solution will capture all the relevant data and provide visibility to the information. This becomes fundamental to understanding and managing costs.
- Automate and Optimize Complex Operations
Cloud-based ERP that is designed specifically for the metals industry allows you to automatically analyze inventory and multi-state production requirements including outsourced processing.
This automation will help you:
- Improve forecasting using sales history
- Sharpen your quotes based on resource availability
- Build production schedules as soon as orders are placed
- Record actual production, scrap, sheers, break weights and determine additional cuts and material requirements based on scrap
- Route jobs automatically through the production process
- Optimize use of resources and allocate materials at each step
With timely, accurate data shared across functions, your organization can place orders with precision and optimize scheduling. Through cloud ERP, you can automate job routing to coordinate with a complex matrix of materials and resources required to produce orders within cost and on time. All of these benefits improve profit margins which in turn lead to better financial outcomes and revenue growth.
Take A Closer Look
How can you find out more about cloud ERP designed for the new age of metals operations? For more information, download our ebook, New Rules of Metals Operations: How Cloud ERP Delivers Data-Driven Insights and Masters Multi-step Processing.
And to learn more about how RealSTEEL can help you optimize your resources, contact us today to schedule an in-depth demo personalized for your metals processing business and your production environment.
