I have been working with ERP in various roles for over 30 years, directly involved in over a hundred implementations, while my company has been involved with over 400 more. Of course, in many ways the systems we use today are completely different from what we used in the ‘80s – back then it was green screens, simple transaction entry forms, and cumbersome updates (at best) to link what one department did with all the other areas that needed access to that information. Then there were those planning programs that took all the information along with various parameters the users needed to set and told us what to do.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

When fixing a downtime issue, make one change at a time.

Often, multiple changes are made at the same time, without individually checking their impact on the equipment. This makes it much harder to diagnose problems and evaluate the effectiveness of solutions.

When fixing a downtime issue, make one change at a time.

Often, multiple changes are made at the same time, without individually checking their impact on the equipment. This makes it much harder to diagnose problems and evaluate the effectiveness of solutions.

It is essential to capture a reason and duration for each downtime incident to enable the team to effectively prioritize and focus.

Start simple, and make sure every reason is clear (when compared with other reasons) and describes symptoms (as opposed to attempting to diagnose root causes). Remove reasons that aren’t regularly used and add reasons.

It is essential to capture a reason and duration for each downtime incident to enable the team to effectively prioritize and focus.

Start simple, and make sure every reason is clear (when compared with other reasons) and describes symptoms (as opposed to attempting to diagnose root causes). Remove reasons that aren’t regularly used and add reasons.

From a recent article published by M4B Marketing:

When analyzing your sales performance consider the following: 

• Pricing changes eg. price increases or discounting
• Competitors – competitors entering or exiting the market
• New product or service launch growing sales
• New product or service cannibalizing existing product or service sales
• Customers moving between products or services
• Changes in customer demand eg. increasing or decreasing
• The segments and distribution channels you operate in

When Hoffmaster finally flipped the switch on its ERP migration at the end of February, the IT director was nervous. Not only was the paper-goods supplier consolidating a manufacturing site on Infor ERP LX, but it was also replacing an old shop floor reporting system with a new one from Crossroads RMC. There was a lot that could go wrong for the IBM i shop.

"When we weighed all of our products, Crossroads RMC pretty much convinced us their product was plug and play and their integration back to LX was solid as a rock, and they were right..." the IT director says.

Click Here to Learn about Hoffmaster’s move to Infor LX and their implementation of the Crossroads MES solution.