BH Manufacturing, a major supplier of DIY assembly furniture kits to large national retail outlets, including Makro, Game and Dion, recently contracted Pretoria-based integrated IT solutions provider, ADM Systems, to upgrade and automate its Macola Progression ERP solution, as well as integrate its existing systems with Vision Reporting business intelligence and analysis software.
The solution has been operational for the past eight months at BH Manufacturing's Benrose plant.
Operations manager Gert Jansen van Rensburg singles out the major benefits of Vision Reporting as time saving and providing greater visibility into the operations of the company, allowing standardised, simple, quick and easy report generation across the whole company.
"Through the Vision, data link information can be extracted rapidly into Excel reports on request," said Jansen van Rensburg. "This is making our auditing process a great deal quicker and easier. Access is controlled within the highly-secure system, but with our approval, auditors can extract what they need themselves or we can generate it for them on demand."
ADM Systems developed the data link between Vision Reporting and Macola ERP system used in South Africa and widely in other parts of the world. This enhancement was sanctioned by Infor, the owners of Vision, and the enhanced product is now being sold into Macola sites around the world, improving overall reporting by extending access to all the accounting and distribution modules.
Jansen van Rensburg adds the 'dashboard' reporting feature provides clear, colour-coded, easy-to-assimilate visual information. If the graphic indicator is green, everything is within the desired parameters, if it is yellow then the viewer needs to take note and if it is red then immediate corrective action is required.
BH Manufacturing makes almost 300 different furniture products in kit form, ranging from home computer work stations to desks, cupboards and a variety of other office furniture, using state-of-the-art CNC machinery to cut, shape, drill and counter-sink every component. Each kit is securely packed in protective material with fully-illustrated assembly instructions. All of the data for the instructions is drawn from the database.
"What we have now is two best-of-breed programs that ADM Systems has brought together for us in a really meaningful way, to produce business information and intelligence that keeps our finger on the pulse and improves our overall operation," said Jansen van Rensburg.
The upgraded system includes procurement functionality that tracks and records every step of the process. It makes provision for specific workflows in terms of the procurement processes, notifying the various role-players of specific actions required from them via e-mail or SMS.
In essence, a requisition can be placed in the system, automatically notifying the relevant procurement officer who obtains three quotations, enters the information and generates an unauthorised purchase order. Based on the configuration, the relevant line manager is notified requesting the necessary approval to authorise the purchase transaction. The system caters for various levels of approval classified by proposed purchase value or product/service definition. The system distinguishes between these levels and definitions, and will skip those that are irrelevant.
This solution also performs what Jansen van Rensburg refers to as "commitment accounting principles". It will calculate not only from general ledger what amount has already been spent, but will also establish potential expenditure that has been committed to a supplier although not yet received. The total value is compared to the budget, giving management an instant snapshot of the remaining available budget at the time of approving the expenditure. This function allows management to effectively manage budgets and cash flow. With assistance from Vision Reporting, spending patterns and trends can easily be determined.
Jansen van Rensburg added: "Another operational enhancement in Macola is the ability to link to a personalised calendar to automatically schedule work, based on production scheduling set against customer orders or stock production orders. It now also automates the processes of running the MRP report on a predefined scheduled basis to check stock levels of component and raw materials against what is required to meet the production targets. Should any components or raw materials quantities be insufficient, an unauthorised purchase order is automatically generated via the procurement module and checked against the budget.
"It is this type of functionality that delivers great value in terms of time-saving, procedural streamlining, maximising uptime and taking the guesswork out of any process.
"The system also caters for individual requirements, allowing people in the workflow who want different reports specific to their needs to drill right down, even to an individual purchase order, if required. Staff can drag and drop data important to their area of responsibility into Vision and generate the reports that they need.
"Vision certainly makes the best of Excel functionality. Reports can be saved in Excel for easy distribution and can be automatically updated at a mouse click, because all of the database information available is real-time. The Vision Alerts functionality also schedules specific reports, runs them automatically and e-mails them to a 'need to know' list."
BH manufacturing is now seeing the real benefits of automation and business intelligence solution offering dynamic analysis and reporting functionality, simply and easily, without any requirement for complex database operational knowledge.
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