Author: Paul Henriques in: Business Solutions
As many multi-nationals are returning portions of their subcontracted parts and operations back to North America, demand for manufactured North American goods has been skyrocketing. This means that you, as a North American manufacturer, are in an excellent position to increase your business.
And as your business grows, you need to be ready to increase your spending to ensure your profits are also maximized. This means:
All while avoiding the pitfalls that come with exponential growth. Things like:
Any one of these issues is an organizational eye-opener that should be investigated as they are an indication of a systemic problem that needs to be resolved. These are early warning signs that will becomes chronic issues if not addressed.
These issues can be solved with the right time and fiscal investment but how can you be sure that you are spending in the right place?
As you already know, keeping up with technology is both exhausting and vital to your continued success. New tech often comes with better productivity, simpler operations, and more training.
The goal here is to select the best technologies that complement and improve your operations. Start with a future-ready ERP system and move on to new tools, like: lasers with nesting, barcode scanners, vision systems, and shop monitors.
Make sure your ERP can communicate with all your new hardware to ensure that the information you need is still flowing to your dashboards and reports in a way that allows you to make better decisions with your data.
A good ERP can help you improve planning and visibility while decreasing knowledge silos. This means less crises, less bad decisions, less running around, and better communication between your teams.
With the demand for your products flowing in, you need to know what you can make and where you can expand. Of course, acquiring more space with a new warehouse or yard can be good, but sometimes simply adding a second shift, or more efficient processes can help improve your firm for now.
In this, forecasting is an excellent tool that will feed into your rough cut capacity planning. While calculating capacity by hand or with spreadsheets is still possible, it is always best to move toward a single database to manage all your data. Most new ERP systems will have this available. By having the capacity planning in your ERP, you can be sure that your expansion plans are more inline with current projections.
A good ERP shows you where you need to expand. This leads to less stress for management and less overworked employees, which means better retention and better management.
OnRamp has talked about the ongoing staff shortages in manufacturing at length in other posts. Indeed, it is becoming difficult for shops in all nations to retain staff.
As your shop expands due to demand, you will need to look at training your current staff and hiring smart. However, be careful to not expand too quickly, as that can lead to a breakdown of company culture and a lack of proper training leading to decreases in quality and productivity.
For staff, an ERP with an HR module that tracks employee skills and training can increase your worker usage.
A good ERP that helps with HR and staff training leads to better job assignment, better management, and more staff retention.
The joys of increased demand for your products that are above your current capacity can lead to added stress to get orders out on time, however investing in smart technology and managing your staff and facilities can often ensure that you continue your growth with few growing pains. All together, this means more sales and a stronger bottom line for your organization.
For more information about how OnRamp ERP software can add value to your business fill in the contact form below. A member of our support team will contact you within 1 business day to discuss any questions you have.
Start the collaboration with us while figuring out the best solution based on your needs.
Our efforts began as an internal project of Mancor Industries when we identified the need for a more cohesive ERP system to manage the complexity of multiple plants, multiple products, multiple customers and multiple functions.
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