ERP Solution For Donnelly Custom Manufacturing

About Donnelly Custom Manufacturing

Question:

Discuss about the Needs Of ERP Solution For The Donnelly Custom Manufacturing.

ERP or enterprise resource planning refers to the integrated management of the core business processes where software and technology acts as one of the most important factor (Monk, & Wagner, 2012). The main things that are included in the ERP are planning of the product, planning for the production of the product, the manufacturing process and the delivery system, the sales and marketing department, management of the materials, management of the inventory and many more.  Leon (2014) explained that ERP can also be referred to as the business management software that can be used by an organisation to collect, store, manage and interpret data from the business activities.

This report discusses about the needs of ERP solution for the Donnelly Custom manufacturing so as to deliver good product on time and to tackle with the difficulties they are facing right now. Along with this the report also discusses about the possible future outcomes of the company and how the company is going to earn benefits from the new suggested ERP solution.

Donnelly Custom Manufacturing company was founded in the year of 1984 and has its headquarters in Alexandria. It is a multi-national company that serves a number of renowned customers like the Diebold, Graco and many more. Donnelly aims at perusing the best practices of an industry so as to fulfil its promises of delivering the good products on time. After its foundation the company has played a great role and has earned a lot of reputation in a short interval of time (Donnmfg.com, 2017). The company had a can do attitude which helped it a lot in setting standards of its work in a very short time. There are almost 225 employees of the company who are focused on doing this job. They are able to manage about 2800 active molds along with that about 600 different materials are used and about 15000 mold changes every year. In the business of manufacturing precision and efficiency are the paramount so they are having a relentless war on the waste-backed advanced technologies, innovative processes and their tireless commitment for their whole team. The annual revenue of the company is around $25 to $50 million (USD) per year (yahoo.com, 2017).

Analysis of the company’s current situation:

Donnelly aims at providing short-run manufacturing and value added services to the original equipment manufacturers who provides a good quality good from the industrial to commercial products. they want to perform its operation in a short interval of time. They make use of the OS/2 operating system and various software for the purpose of managing their operations. Besides that, they also used manual process for the purpose of making the production schedule. The need of ERP solution arises due to the fact that the growth of the company is outpacing because of the capacity of the system(Donnmfg.com, 2017). According to the president of the company Kirscht “Manufacturers today operate in a flat world”. He also stated that” The playing field between the U.S and the off-shore market is growing more level by the day, and every player along with the supply chain is intertwined. If your information technology platform does not support lean operations and EDI transactions, you will fall below the curve”.

Need for ERP Solutions

Lack of communication:           

The customers of the company want to communicate and interact by the use of electronic means which is not possible by the use of the current system they are having.

Outdated techniques:

The company also identified that the traditional method of scheduling the and managing the shop floor manually was an out dated process and requires lot of labour. The main reason for which the ERP (Babu, & Bezawada, 2012) solution needs to be developed is the limitation of the number of the peoples who are able to remain in the same module at the same time have become unsustainable.

Outdated software’s:

The customers of the company were looking forward towards the development but the old software’s that the company was having was not ready for meeting the demands of the customers (Tarhini, Ammar & Tarhini, 2015). The company also wanted an ERP solution for the purpose of handling the requirements of the injection moulders.

For customer satisfaction:

The most essential reason for which the company is in need of an ERP (Tsai et al. 2012) solution is to fulfil the promises that they have made to the customers of delivering a very good quality product and the best service.

The company was looking for a fit system which could function in the future very properly. By looking into the needs of the company the best ERP solution for the company would be by the use of the EnterpriseIQ software from the IQMS. EnterpriseIQ is a different type of software which helps in avoiding the hustle of Off-the-shelf ERP solutions (they are not good and may require a third party software for customization.). The main reason for choosing this EnterpriseIQ is that it can incredibly fit in accordance to the requirements of the company. One of the advantageous factor of EnterpriseIQ is because of its comprehensive functionality and its design which is made for every type of manufacturing. EnterpriseIQ (Howarth, 2012) has the ability of handling the distinctive issues that are related to the model of injection. Many of the major aspects of the business are easily handled by the Enterprise IQ. There are also other factors which are responsible for choosing the EnterpriseIQ and this includes the ways of using it which is a very easy process along with the fact that for using this software only a little amount of training is required. EnterpriseIQ is contained and extendable in within a single database without nay third part add-ons has made it appropriate for using it in the ERP solution Commitment of IQMS to enhance and improve the single-source software in the future for the success of the customers seemed to be critical for the company but the best fit and functionality provided by the IQMS at an attractive price made EnterpriseIQ a platform that will help the company to be around and vibrate in the future (Zarei & Naeli, 2012).

Benefits of EnterpriseIQ Software

The implementation of EnterpriseIQ will greatly help in simplifying the operations of Donnelly across the shop floors. The software will help in real-time monitoring of the production which will initially help the shop floor supervisors to access all the production data of the company anytime from any place of the world (Ahmad & Cuenca, 2013). This will help the supervisors in saving time by avoiding the travel from one shop to another so as to check the presses. Besides this the software will also help in eliminating the entry of the excess data thereby saving a lot of time of the supervisors or team leaders as they do not have to work overtime beyond their shifts for the purpose of only entering the data. The communication between the internal staffs of the company, the suppliers and the customers will also be improved by the use of this software (Shaul, & Tauber, 2013). The time required for the invoicing also gets decreased. Donnelly will stand up and keep running by the use of all the modules of EnterpriseIQ including the Real-time monitoring of the production, management of the quality, and many more. The employees of Donnelly will be able to manoeuvre all the levels of business very easily and will be able to save a lot of time along with eliminating the mistakes that could have taken place in case of manual process (Kwak et al, 2012).

Conclusion:

The report helps to conclude that with an ERP system the company will be very much successful in supporting and confirming the different business strategies that will help it out in focusing on the core competencies of the company and will also help in detecting of the situations when it can gain more advantage of the market. By the involvement of the Enterprise IQ the company will be able to achieve more success and will be able to meet its customer demands at a much faster rate. Donnelly believed that knowing the customers and their business is one of the leading factors of success and due to the fact that IQMS is working on the same region for adapting towards the customers’ requirements with a very little cost and effort lead the company chose EnterpriseIQ as best ERP solution.  All the Requirements of Donnelly will be fulfilled by implementation of the EnterpriseIQ thereby helping the company in meeting the demands of the customers. EnterpriseIQ will also cost low and will greatly help the company in saving of time as well as money. Most of the complexities will be removed if Donnelly makes use of the EnterpriseIQ.

References:

Ahmad, M. M., & Cuenca, R. P. (2013). Critical success factors for ERP implementation in SMEs. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 29(3), 104-111. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcim.2012.04.019)

Babu, K. V. S. N., & Bezawada, M. (2012). Enterprise resource planning. (DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2142346)

Donnmfg.com, (2017). How Short Run Is Done™ | About Donnelly Custom Manufacturing Company. Donnmfg.com. Retrieved 15 November 2017, from https://www.donnmfg.com/about.html

Kwak, Y. H., Park, J., Chung, B. Y., & Ghosh, S. (2012). Understanding end-users’ acceptance of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in project-based sectors. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 59(2), 266-277.( DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2011.2111456)

Leon, A. (2014). Enterprise resource planning. McGraw-Hill Education. (Available at: https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=t_bBBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Leon,+A.+(2014).+Enterprise+resource+planning.+McGraw-Hill+Education.&ots=sncu-Wsuou&sig=OsCUCJU_0hKFzja5ceFlLcgHpqk#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Monk, E., & Wagner, B. (2012). Concepts in enterprise resource planning. Cengage Learning. (Available at: https://books.google.co.in/books?id=pG94WAknOF8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Monk,+E.,+%26+Wagner,+B.+(2012).+Concepts+in+enterprise+resource+planning.+Cengage+Learning.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYtZq3qsDXAhUFu48KHUjQBisQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Shaul, L., & Tauber, D. (2013). Critical success factors in enterprise resource planning systems: Review of the last decade. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 45(4), 55. (DOI: 10.1145/2501654.2501669)

Tarhini, A., Ammar, H., & Tarhini, T. (2015). Analysis of the critical success factors for enterprise resource planning implementation from stakeholders’ perspective: A systematic review. International Business Research, 8(4), 25. (DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ibr.v8n4p25)

Tsai, W. H., Lee, P. L., Shen, Y. S., & Lin, H. L. (2012). A comprehensive study of the relationship between enterprise resource planning selection criteria and enterprise resource planning system success. Information & Management, 49(1), 36-46. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2011.09.007)

yahoo.com. (2017). RRD Key Statistics | R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Stock - Yahoo Finance. Finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved 16 November 2017, from https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RRD/key-statistics?p=RRD

Zarei, B., & Naeli, M. (2012). Critical Success Factors in Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation: A Case-Study Approach. In Enterprise Information Systems and Advancing Business Solutions: Emerging Models (pp. 74-85). IGI Global. (Available at: https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hu0j5bvp5DQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA74&dq=Zarei,+B.,+%26+Naeli,+M.+(2012).+Critical+Success+Factors+in+Enterprise+Resource+Planning+Implementation:+A+Case-Study+Approach.+In+Enterprise+Information+Systems+and+Advancing+Business+Solutions:+Emerging+Models+(pp.+74-85).+IGI+Global.&ots=kb_uIxAQ8b&sig=LcMFVmsGqpB_vtrc14NELgMzJs8#v=onepage&q&f=false)