What kind of systems do you need for your startup?What I’m referring to are the types of systems that manage your documentation, inventory, purchasing, production control, finances etc. I’m not talking about a full-blown implementation here at this stage of the game but something smaller to help you effectively manage your startup business. Fundamentally, you still need all the controls of a much larger system but not all the ‘bells and whistles’ that accompanies it. I have mentioned MRP/ERP, which stands for manufacturing resource planning and enterprise resource planning respectively, and have used it in the context of being a complete system for my discussion. However it is really just a portion of a complete package that would manage your entire business. Some other terms that may or may not be familiar to you are as follows:
As your company grows, it will likely be necessary to take that next step up to a larger system that contains many of these functions listed above. This also depends upon how much you outsource as well but you still need to control your design and manufacturing documentation, purchasing and inventory to an extent and of course, your finances at a minimum. There are many solution providers like SAP, Oracle, Mapics, Great Plains, MAS 90 etc. that can fulfill many of your needs as your company grows. As with larger, more robust systems, you will need more resources to manage the data. So what do you recommend? Having a small system in place to manage and control all your Item Masters, BOMs, AVL and ECOs would not only save time, money and reduce the need for resources to manage the data but will also minimize errors from use of many detached spreadsheets. Certain functions like a ‘where used’ search mechanism are invaluable when making a change such as deleting a part from an assembly. By understanding how many assemblies are affected by this part deletion allows for better decision-making and greatly reduces the chances of error of missing a BOM for example. A couple of software packages that I have used in the past that satisfied our immediate requirements at the time were financial software QuickBooks from Quicken and a Parts List Manager called Parts & Vendors (P & V) from Trilogy Design. Parts & Vendors was easy to install and we were up and running in a matter of hours and not days. It was simple to update, maintain, export and run reports out of as well. When you receive parts in from a vendor, what do you do with them? Where are they kept or stored? How is the inventory count maintained? What we used to do was simple yet powerful enough to maintain an accurate count of inventory, from new incoming parts to outgoing kits that were assembled at our contract manufacturer. When a part arrived, we labeled it with a P/N and date code, checked the paperwork against the system and part (to make sure we received the right part) and then put the part in stock in a specific location. The system (P & V) was updated to reflect the new quantity. Since we had a P/N system in place, View P/N System all functionally equivalent parts were grouped together in specified locations that we had previously set up. When we built some prototypes, it was a simple matter to pull parts from inventory, kit them and then send off to the contract manufacturer for assembly. All of the data in P & V was used when we migrated to a larger, more complete system that would have been much more difficult to do had it not been for the fact that it was all organized and controlled. The solutions mentioned above were simple to implement, easy to maintain, cost effective and kept us out of trouble! I highly recommend checking out Parts & Vendors from Trilogy Designs and QuickBooks from Quicken for your business.
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