Poor Customer Material Management
Sometimes you do everything in-house and send your goods off to the next team. Sometimes you receive parts, add your specialty and sell it to your customers. But sometimes parts are sent to you by clients, you do what you do best, and then you send them back. This is customer supplied material and it can be chaos.
Why chaos? Because dealing with customer supplied material requires extra care. You need to ensure you have minimal defects, less scrap, and excellent inventory management. All the parts, all the packing materials, all the processes and time taken. It adds extra layers to any production.
Better Tools for Better Management
None of these problems are insurmountable. These problems might not even seem like problems, since you have lived with the manual process for so long, but once the right solution is in place, you will be amazed at the simplicity that leaves you thinking about how you ever did it any other way.
For Customer Supplied Material (CSM), it helps to have a planning tool that was developed by those that know about this unique problem and have built said tool to ensure that the action of receiving supplied material, processing it, and shipping it back out is completed without a hitch. This is the kind of problem that OnRamp’s Manufacturing ERP was built to solve. OnRamp has built an entire module around improving how you process customer supplied material. All while generating the required documentation and processing the relevant costs. And because all the transactions are within the same program and database, you get instant processing, a paper-free (or low paper) environment, and a decrease to user-generated errors. All of this means less overall production errors generated by a leaner workforce.
Less errors. Less paperwork. Better documentation. Less labor hours spent. Lower costs. These are the type of benefits that you will see when you use the right tools for the right job. These are the benefits that our customers receive by implementing OnRamp ERP and engaging with us to find solutions to their problems.
How OnRamp Helps
OnRamp users are more than clients, they are our partners. As such, we listen and engage with them to improve their operations in any way we can. This is why when one of our clients told us of a problem they were having:
- Material that was being sent to them by their customer
- It was difficult to track the parts and the packing materials
- Some parts seemed to go missing
- Damaged parts were difficult to track
- Prices and costs were not adding up
We decided to take action. Our teams consulted with our client and determined ways to help them improve their operations with better software, better hardware, and better methods:
- Software – OnRamp ERP was updated with a Customer Supplied Material module that allows users to input the customer supplied materials, for the customer as a vendor and as a customer, which lets users track material, steps, and packing material like a normal part
- Hardware – OnRamp ERP scanners and shop monitors allow users to better track warehouse and shop floor processes, respectfully. With better information on where the material is and what process it is undergoing, inventory tracking has never been easier
- Methods – With the Customer Supplied Material module, users also implemented OnRamp’s WMS (Warehouse Management System) that improved inventory tracking and storage, including customer supplied packing materials
Our client saw an immediate improvement across all metrics:
- Less lost and damaged material
- Less scrap
- More efficient materials usage
- Better cost accounting for labor and materials
- Improved turnaround time
- Better finished part quality
- Improved customer satisfaction
These are valuable additions to any company. When two companies collaborate to create better value together and produce net benefits for all parties involves, then that is a successful partnership. Contact us today to find out how OnRamp Solutions can help you.
OnRamp’s CSM Module Features:
- Real-time reporting, dashboards, and notifications
- Accounting integration
- Order tracking
- Automatic Lead Time calculation
- Rough Cut and Detailed Capacity Planning
- Integrated Resource Planning
- Integrated Maintenance Management
- Labor Tracking
- OnRamp Scanner app to quickly process printed work orders and scan warehouse and inventory tags
- Inventory control and warehouse management
- Auto create shipping documents when completing a shipment
- Track defects and scrap with data sent to the QMS
Customer Supplied Material Reports
Customer Supplied Material Dashboards
Customer Supply Orders Screen
