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.

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

• Is the information captured correctly?
• Can everyone access the information?
• Is this an accurate representation of what’s going on across all operations?

Make your shop floor paperless and put systems in place that talk to one another and automatically pull and push data to and from your ERP so that you can look in one place for all the information you need to run your business effectively.

I realize it was just Mother’s Day, but I don’t mean your mother.

I mean... MOM- Manufacturing Operations Management, a suite of manufacturing applications designed to improve efficiencies, without the investment in a costly system.

MOM provides manufacturers with the ability to extend their ERP system by offering specific applications that will streamline their operations at an affordable price.

MOM Suite of Manufacturing Applications:

• Manufacturing Execution System (MES)
• Time & Attendance
• Labor Reporting
• Data Collection
• Dashboards
• Scheduling
• Shipping & Receiving
• Supplier Barcoding

So, I ask again… how’s your MOM? Contact Crossroads RMC to learn more.

Here are some issues that you might run into if you stay on an old porting set too long:

• Incompatibility because of operating system patches
• Printing issues because of out-of-date libraries
• Potential performance issues if binaries are not updated
• Updating third-party products may not be possible because of dependencies
• Limited support from Infor
• Issues with updating database software/patches because of dependencies (if the database is also running on the same server as the application)

Need help getting on a newer porting set? Let us know! We’d be happy to help.

Earlier this year I wrote a blog about motivating employees to do more… to be more. Doing this helps your business grow. Here is a link to my article> https://www.crossroadsrmc.com/Resources/Infor-ERP-Tips-News/its-not-all-about-the-money-money-money-motivating-employees-in-the-new-year-2

And I would like to share a link to a recent article from Industry Week giving a different take on the same idea.

https://www.industryweek.com/recruiting-retention/grow-employees-grow-your-business

1. Eliminate paper shop packet and distribution of the paperwork to the shop floor.     

2. Eliminate manual (paper-based) recording activities and the need to key in the transactions.

3. Easy electronic scheduling by sequence and changing job priorities.

4. Evaluate differences using actual times compared to standards.

5. Improve data accuracy and eliminate the need to chase and fix errors.

6. Practice Real-Time data reporting to monitor efficiencies and identify problems as they occur.