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Manufacturing Outsourcing: Microsoft Great Plains implementation, customization & reporting – overview for consultant

by: Andrew Karasev

Manufacturing in the USA is far away down from mid 20th century top of the hill or its golden time. However we are in very competitive business environment and we have to do what market tends us to do. Nowadays competitive offshore manufacturing labor cost outweighs custom clearance fees and forces us to have not full-size manufacturing, but rather final assembly facilities here in the US distribution centers, such as Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles. We’d like to give you successful implementation/downsizing/outsourcing scenario of mid-size machinery manufacturer.

• Downsizing need. US recession of 2000-2004 decreased monthly crane trucks order from 200 per month to 50. Company laid off manufacturing and assembly workers. ERP system had full-featured manufacturing (Kewill manufacturing) and the annual maintenance fee to Kewill was about k$50 plus company had more employees in accounting department to enter manufacturing related data than it had manufacturing workers Kewill was serving just manufacturing automation, Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL 2000 was in place of General Ledger (GL), Sales Order Processing and Account Payables module (AP)
• Switch to light Manufacturing. Great Plains Dynamics Bill of Materials (currently Microsoft Great Plains Bill of Materials) can serve light manufacturing and the cost of ownership is relatively low – you pay 16% annual maintenance fee and this includes free new version and discounted Great Plains technical support from Microsoft Business Solutions directly. Client did purchase Great Plains Inventory Control module, Purchase Order Processing with PO Generator to replenish spare parts automatically. Great Plains Customization partner developed light Great Plains Dexterity customization to automatically build several blocks in Bill of Materials on SOP Sales Order allocation.
• Internet Ordering. eCommerce is very popular for apparels and general merchandise. For custom machinery assembly it will come in the next decade (we are not talking here about GM or Chrysler). Microsoft Great Plains SOP module tables, however allow you to develop ecommerce ordering via eConnect or custom stored procedures. Consider eOrder – this is sale on account over the internet – however it is ASP application, not ASPX or .Net
• Reporting. Crystal Reports is reporting maestro if we are talking about Microsoft SQL Server based System.

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

About the author:

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in
California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia

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