Manufacturing businesses need industry focused operations and accounting software planning

Manufacturers face tough competition and a number of challenges across inventory management, production scheduling and meeting regulatory requirements. In a rapidly changing environment, how can you grow your manufacturing business while controlling costs and increasing profitability?

Below we highlight five key challenges that manufacturers are facing and how Sage 200 can solve them:

5 key challenges for manufacturers

1) Build what you need, when you need it

  • Problem – With a constantly changing order book it can be difficult for manufacturers to keep up with production and order prioritisation.
  • Solution – Sage 200 provides the user with an in depth view of the works orders required and when to raise them. It also alerts users to any late or overdue orders at the first sign of problems.

2) Maintain stock levels

  • Problem – Stock management is dependent on the company’s method of working. Ultimately it is a blend of stock reorder levels, minimum levels and both Sales and Production demand. With a number of mitigating factors, it’s difficult to perform accurately.
  • Solution – Sage 200 provides the user with an in depth view of the purchase orders required and when to raise them. It takes into account the quantities needed, who to purchase them from and ensures you adhere to the supplier’s reorder quantities. It looks ahead at future stock balances, orders and forecasts. Also, it can aggregate the requirements to ensure efficient procurement takes place.

3) Maintain traceability

  • Problem – Most manufacturers have some, if not total, traceability requirements. This means that they need to be able to provide traceable information for component(s), finished goods or both. This can mean holding paperwork and having to keep separate records against all activities.
  • Solution – Sage 200 provides the user with a complete batch and serial tracking system. The ‘Item Traceability’ enquiry enables users to lookup a serial or batch number at any time in the future to see the items journey from receipt to sale or inclusion in a build.

4) Accurate costing

  • Problem – A key requirement for planning is the visibility of accurate costings. A number of companies do not have this in place and rely on their month end P&L for retrospective reporting.
  • Solution – Sage 200 can be setup in many ways to help provide accurate manufacturing costings. Stock can be issued on a FIFO, Standard, Average or Actual basis. If the site doesn’t want to cost for production an overhead recovery can be applied. If a route is created, both labour and machine times can be applied on a budgeted basis or recorded in real time, incurring the costs of who did what for how long and which machines were used. All of this culminates into drillable costings to provide you with accurate data.

5) Shop Floor Data Capture

  • Problem – Companies struggle to link the actual production with the back office system.
  • Solution – Sage 200 has the ability for shop floor users to see their open works orders, issue materials, log onto the route and record any variances. If non conformance reporting is also required there is a handy question section to enable users to record results. All of this is done in situ on the shop floor and instantly updates the core system in real time.

Sage 200  is a modular based software solution designed to manage your finances, customers and business insight in one solution. For more information or to organise a demo, give us a call on 02879644975 or message info@acornitsolutions.com