The Path to Product Excellence: Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Enhancing Commun...
Epicor 9 ERP- ERP for the Automotive Industry
1. FOR AUTOMOTIVE
Click toEpicor ERP is the clear choice for
Why add subtitle
automotive supply chains
Presenter Name
January 2, 2012
Date of Presentation
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
2. Today’s Agenda:
• Who is e2b teknologies
• How Epicor ERP can handle top requirements of
the automotive manufacturing industry
• Epicor automotive success story
• Measuring your return on investment (ROI)
• Questions
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
3. About e2b teknologies
e2b teknologies is a leading provider of ERP & CRM solutions from publishers such as:
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
5. We also…
We also develop business to business solutions for the cloud. Some of our
applications include:
And More!
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
6. Automotive Top Requirements:
EDI Support
Release Accounting
Fine Control of Shipments
Bar Code Labeling Shipment Verification
Sequenced Shipping
Lean Manufacturing Production Control
Program Management
Feature Based Assembly
Multi-Mode Manufacturing
Global Capability
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
7. Epicor’s “Out of the Box” EDI
Inbound Outbound
Transactions Transactions
Purchase Order
Planning Schedule
Acknowledgement
Advance Ship
Shipping Schedule
Notice
Epicor EDI also:
•Provides maps and Epicor
Service Connect workflows
Purchase Orders Invoices •Easily supports “special”
documents, such as Railcar
shipping information
Purchase Order
Change
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
8. Automated Inbound
For each one of the supported inbound EDI
transactions users can define an acceptance criteria:
- Manual
• Manually Accept
- Automatic
• Always Accept
• Accept if no errors
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
9. Automated Outbound
- Auto/Label Print Control
module
- Seagull BarTender –
Automotive Industry-
compliant labels
- For each one of the
supported outbound EDI
transactions users can define
an outbound generation
action:
• Manual
• Automatic
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
10. EDI Flow
Epicor provides maps and workflows that support all EDI standards, including
EDIFACT, XML, and X12
Purchase EDI Epicor
Epicor 9
Order EDI Translation Service
Message Application
XML Mapped ERM
Connect
Calls
appropriate
web service
method
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
11. EDI/Demand Management
Provides control •EDI into sales order •Incoming changes
inside ERM •EDI into shipping schedule •Matching logic
Tolerance •Adding/changing/deleting schedule lines
settings: •Price variations
Cumulative
reconciliation for Advanced
System reliability
release configuring
accounting
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
12. Release Accounting
• Reconcile quantity you shipped versus quantity they received
• 100% on customer (AR) side in EDI/Demand Management Module
• Supply (AP) side planned for future
• Full EDI support
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
13. Lean Manufacturing Production Control
Production plan sets targets
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
16. Epicor Success Story
Codan Rubber is a global auto parts manufacturer, headquartered
Codan Rubber Mexico in China. Their Mexico branch purchased Epicor 9 to help increase
visibility in their business, optimize expense management, and
enable real-time decision making.
Company Facts
Location: Tlalnepantla, MX Codan used a solution designed for sales, administration and
Industry: Automotive finance, but as they began to explore its manufacturing and
ERP Used: Epicor 9 distribution capabilities, they found it didn’t work and services were
expensive.
Codan chose Epicor for its efficient control of manufacturing
processes, from product quoting for the automotive assembly
plants, to load monitoring.
"I like Epicor's implementation methodology, in particular the
process of establishing milestones with concrete success criteria in
terms of return of investment (ROI) for each stage of
implementation. This gives us assurance that both Codan Rubber
Mexico and Epicor have the same picture of the expected benefits -
including operations and budget. Our experience with Epicor has
been very satisfactory," said Javier Tamez, general manager at
Codan Rubber Mexico.
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
18. Measuring Your Return on Investment (ROI)
Built with real
data from Epicor
customers
Chart your
payback
Best in Class
comparison
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
19. Summary
• Most Automotive ERP systems are built on legacy technologies…but not Epicor
• e2b teknologies has nearly 20 years Automotive ERP Experience – OEM Supply
Chain & Aftermarket Manufacturing and Distribution
• Epicor ERP is a clear leader for Automotive Suppliers
Questions?
Josh Bailey James Mallory
jbailey@e2btek.com jmallory@e2btek.com
440.352.4700 x249 440.352.4700 x229
e2b teknologies | 521 fifth avenue | chardon, oh 44024 | 440.352.4700 | www.e2btek.com
Notas del editor
We’ve helped a lot of automotive suppliers with their ERP systems through the years. These include companies in many segments of the automotive industries including tier two and tier three suppliers, aftermarket suppliers and distributors, heavy truck, government, and more.
These are the top requirements for Automotive parts suppliers, and Epicor ERM handles these very well. (click) In fact Epicor is a standout in the industry in the amount of support and flexibility that is built into the ERM system itself for these features: EDI Support, Release Accounting, Lean Manufacturing, Feature-Based Assembilty (or Confuguators), Multi-Mode Manufacturing, and Global Capability in particular.
Hereare the EDI transactions provided out of the box. The EDI/Demand Management framework inside the Epicor ERM system handles inbound Planning and Shipping schedules, which are processed into sales orders with multiple releases. Even if it’s an inbound Purchase Order with only a single release, the EDI/Demand Management framework has many settings to control how that is handled in the system also. With Service Connect, any third party EDI translation software can interface with the EDI framework that’s inside Epicor ERM. And Epicor provides the maps for some of those third parties. Pre-built Epicor Service Connect workflows are also provided. Becausethe Demand Management framework is so full featured, it is not a huge effort to map additional special EDI documents and have their requirements supported in the system, such one done recently for a customer, “Railcar Shipping Information.” Normally it is a matter of taking one of the out-of-the-box transactions and altering it for a new requirement.
The system can identify the different types of inbound EDI messages for each trading partner and how they are to be handled in the system: as Forecast, Unfirm Releases, or Incoming Shipping Schedule. A Tier 1 automotive supplier who ships 40,000 parts per day will probably set Demand Management to always accept and automatically process inbound EDI transactions into the ERM system, because they can’t afford any interruption with their trading partner. But the option is there to process only if there are no errors outside of their tolerance settings, or to always manually accept, in which case the transaction is held in Demand Management until someone has reviewed and approved it. The choice is yours how you want to set it up for each trading partner and contract.
The Auto/Label Print Control module triggers the printing of Seagull Bar Tender labels when a shipping or other transaction has occurred. Auto/Label Print Control will also trigger an outbound Advance Ship Notice (or ASN) XML. When that happens if the customer is flagged to receive an invoice, automatic invoicing will occur as soon as the goods ship; otherwise pay on receipt without an invoice is the method available.
Here is an illustration of how an inbound EDI message containing Purchase Order information from your trading partner is entered into the Epicor ERM system. (click) First, as with all EDI implementations in the midmarket, the message is processed by 3rd party EDI translation software. You are free to use any EDI translation software or service you would like; however, Epicor has made sure to provide the maps and Service Connect workflows that work seamlessly with a few packages in particular. (click) Next the message is converted to XML, if it’s not already XML, and sent to Service Connect. Now this is where Epicor True SOA really shines, because Service Connect is going to make sure that the EDI message is not just sent directly into the ERM database. Bad things can happen when you import data into an ERM system that way, such as the wrong data being put in the wrong place, resulting in corrupted records. Service Connect avoids this by calling the appropriate web service method, (click) such as Demand Order entry, to enter the data. How these messages are handled once inside Epicor ERM is another area where Epicor differentiates itself, and I will describe to you how that works next.
The Epicor EDI/Demand Management frameworkprovides full flexibility and control for setting up customer contracts and handling their EDI messages once inside the ERM system. Settings per trading partner include tolerances for when schedule lines can be added or deleted or changed, tolerances for price variations, parameters for matching changes against existing sales orders, and functions for reconciling quantities between you and your trading partner. As an automotive supplier, you can’t have your ERM system making promises that you can’t keep with your trading partner, because as you know you’ll be fined if you can’t ship product. A very powerful Epicor Demand Management feature is the capable to promise function you can turn on for specific trading partners, to first check your available stock and resources against each EDI message that comes in. If not enough resources are available to make and ship the product by the date requested, then the line is rejected, preventing a PO acknowledgement from being sent to the trading partner and the costly fines that go with it.
The Demand Reconciliation application keeps track of what your system says has been shipped so far to the trading partner versus what their system reports they have received. Let’s say your trading partner has sent you an EDI shipping schedule, and in accordance with that schedule, you ship so many pieces this week, next week, the week after, etc. Meanwhile an EDI message has come back saying they have only received 12,000 pieces pieces so far as compared to the 72,000 your system says you shipped. You can agree that it was 12,000 that actually shipped and adjust your field down to 12,000, which will issue a credit memo. Or the trading partner can send a correction in their next EDI transmission.
There are many options to set up production and scheduling in Epicor ERM, and repetitive lean manufacturing against scheduled targets is just one of them. This method supports production without work orders. First you decide what you are going to make, how much you are going to make, your targeted production rate, and the resources involved. You create a Production Activity Plan for these requirements and then a Production Activity Schedule is generated. Kanban receipts will consume to this schedule. The bar chart you see here in the Production Activity Tracker shows your actual manufacturing performance compared to the Plan targets.
Another special Epicor EDI feature is the configurator function you can use to process incoming EDI messages. Epicor’s Product Configurator not only allows for easy selection of product features and options such as seat material and color, it can perform calculations and present specific choices based on parameters entered by the user, such as the dimensions of a door opening. An incoming EDI message that has these parameters preset can be processed through the Product Configurator into anorder.
Epicor supports Multi-Mode Manufacturing capabilities that are required for lower volume products, such as heavy equipment parts, as well as some machined parts that do not justify a dedicated production line and are still produced to work order. Epicor supports Make to Order, Make to Stock, Kanban/Make to Demand, even mixed and matched within the same Job. In this example, we are assembling to order with manufacture to stock assemblies and Kanban replenished material. This enables reduced lead times, economies of scale, and reduced administration for the order. So far we have touched only on the manufacturing highlights that sets Epicor ERM apart from the others, but rest assured the basics are in the product, including full-level lot and serial control, all costing methods, engineering change control, Advanced Planning and Scheduling, MRP, Project Management, and warehouse management.
Epicor handles all of your automotive EDI requirements. In addition, quality compliance for automotive suppliers is available including Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) and Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) along with TS 9000 documentation and quality standards. The engineering side of Epicor is very robust allowing ample flexibility to manage engineering changes, product revisions and lifecycle management, and even tools to help you manage your automotive programs
Just as it did for Codan Rubber, using an embedded end-to-end solution will bring you rapid return on your IT investment. And we can help you measure it with the Epicor ROI Calculator. This tool is built on the tangible benefits our 20,000 customers have experienced through investing in ERM. The calculator is tuned to the solutions we provide at Epicor and clearly aligns benefit with the modules of our solution. Epicor consulting teams monitor ROI at the completion of each stage of your implementation. They can also carry out a post-implementation review to re-evaluate the ROI measures used to justify your ERM investment.