ERP Production Planning: The Most Important Functions, Benefits and Implementation Tips

1. What areas does ERP production planning consist of?
2. Advantages of ERP production planning
3. How to implement ERP production planning
4. Conclusion: Make full use of your ERP production planning

SMEs face a new challenge with the fourth industrial revolution if they want to keep up on the global world market. An modern IT system infrastructure including a Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP system) is essential. Important requirements for an ERP system include open standardization and communication as well as mass data and real-time capability.

Thanks to the transformation to Industry 4.0, production planning also has more potential. A study confirms that you a smart PPS (production planning and control) helps you, to remain competitive. Regrettably, in 2020, although three out of four companies recorded their feedback data minute by minute or second by second, only a few of them exhausted the full potential of the evaluations.

This article helps you find out how your company with ERP production planning also remains competitive in extraordinary times. We show you why you shouldn't hesitate any longer and present you one of the favorite ERP production planning tools of the OMR community.

What areas does ERP production planning consist of?

Image: Components of a production plan

Traditional production planning refers to order processing and its focus is exclusively on planning and controlling production. But all other areas of the company have a direct or indirect impact on the production process. For example, raw materials may not be procured on time, employees* or machines may fail, or liquidity shortages and short-term large orders may influence production. If you optimize your company and production processes with ERP production planning, all company areas are taken into account in your planning.

These are typical components of ERP production planning:

Order processing: bill of materials and work plan management

A major component of ERP production planning is order processing. This includes production processes and resources. You can import or create and coordinate work plans, bill of materials and recipes.

Image: ERP Production Work Plans

Material Management: Resource and Capacity Planning

People, machines, tools, and materials are among the most important and expensive production resources. You can centrally manage your resources and capture operational data. With the data, you plan optimal utilization, react quickly to changing demand or declining performance, and detect bottlenecks early. For example, ERP production planning can ideally plan employees* based on their skills, calendar entries and work and shift plans, and calculate the best possible inventory. The latter ensures low warehouse costs without blocking your production due to missing goods.

Production planning and control (PPS)

A component is not delivered on time, a machine is defective, or a huge pull order brings the production line into sweat? Not with ERP production planning. It takes into account both short-term and long-term planned events, so your employees* can concentrate on their actual work.

Thanks to precise planning, control, and monitoring, you can deliver at any time. Whether just-in-time, from stock, or within a certain period - your delivery times are not empty promises, but are based on facts. This motivates both your employees* and your customers.

Paperless production

The availability checks, production releases, order entry, and much more can take place completely paperless. Digital documents speed up your processes, reduce the error rate, and spare trainees the eternal filing in the back room.

Transparency and tracking: Serial number and batch number tracking

With serial numbers and batch numbers, you always keep control over your articles. This can be relevant for your purchasing, manufacturing, returns or QM process.

Build-to-order and Build-to-stock

You can produce products when they are ordered or as stock goods. ERP production planning usually supports individual, series and variant production.

Operational data collection (BDE) and production feedback

You can collect your production data to increase the efficiency and quality of the production process. Simply record the individual work steps, the start and end time, set-up times and malfunctions.

Image: ERP Production BDE

Pre- and post-calculation

Pre- and post-calculation provide certainty. Based on the evaluation of your production and order processing, you can create recalculations.

Overview

To always make the right decisions, you need to find a way to keep track. A dashboard shows you the order planning. Normally, you can move the required information to the desired place by drag-and-drop, show and hide it, and thus put together your personal overview board.

Advantages of ERP production planning

Image: ERP Production Advantages

ERP production planning makes your production processes more efficient, more cost-effective, and faster to react to changing market conditions.

• Efficient resource use (Lean Production): process analysis based decisions through the adoption of actual times of regular follow-up calculations
• Planning safety: accurate planning and flexible control
• Transparency: permanent overview (e.g., of capacities and processes)
• Automation: Shortening of throughput times, Minimization of errors and bottlenecks and over- or underproduction
• Flexibility: Real-time monitoring and reporting on production processes and implementation of company-specific requirements
• Cross-sectional data management: Ensuring the integrity, timeliness, and accessibility of important data
• Data centralization: Avoidance of multiple storage
• Reduction of machine downtimes: Prevention through cyclic and coordinated maintenance
• Collaboration: Cross-departmental communication
• Satisfied customers: high delivery reliability, short delivery times and low error rates
• Happy employees*innen: Decrease in manual and error-prone tasks

How to implement ERP production planning

First of all, it is important to work out your specific requirements and goals. Then you should deal with the different solutions on the market and match them with your personal specifications. Some companies from the OMR community have chosen the ERP system of microtech GmbH for the implementation of their ERP production planning, which includes a production and manufacturing module. You can find microtech büro+ on OMR Reviews.

The company was founded in 1985 and is thus one of the first providers of Windows ERP solutions. microtech has been awarded (multiple times) as Top Related ERP system, Watchlist ERP system, and Finalist ERP system of the year 2022 in the category Multichannel Commerce. The microtech büro+ inventory management forms the foundation for automated business processes. The software consists of these modules:

• Inventory Management
• Financial Accounting
• Payroll Accounting
• E-Commerce
• Logistics & Shipping
• Production & Manufacturing
• Cash Register

Functions of the microtech production & manufacturing for your ERP production planning:

• Production order
• Single, serial and variant production
• Serial number and batch number tracking
• Build-to-Order & Build-to-Stock
• Paperless production
• Pre- and post-calculation
• Calendar view
• Resource planning
• Import of bill of materials/recipes
• Production planning and control (PPS)
• Operational data collection (BDE)
• Production feedback via BDE

Video: ERP production planning flexibly adjustable

microtech sounds like the optimal solution for your production? Then convince yourself of the user reviews' praised usability, the many functions and the excellent adaptability in the context of a 30-day trial version. You can find more information about the software as always on OMR Reviews.

Conclusion: Make full use of your ERP production planning

No matter which ERP system you choose. We advise you to use all the functions. ERP production planning can do so much for you and your company. Your time is too precious to type in data manually. Dare and enjoy your new productivity!