Manufacturing software has acquired many advancements over the years with highly configurable systems that are out performing the traditional canned or out of the box software systems. I came across this site that touches on the new advancements, the benefits of production software and includes a directory of sites that lead to manufactures of these systems. It has some very resourceful information that I believe will be very beneficial to anyone looking for a way to upgrade or any one looking to implement a new system.

Production reporting includes a wide variety of applications. It can be comprised of efficiency reporting, raw materials tracking, job tracking, job costing, scheduling and planning, defect tracking, quality control, process control, scrap reporting and downtime reporting. One of the more advanced systems is advanced planning. This system would consist of a production scheduling system with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. With AI the system is designed to optimize any schedule on the foundation of previously set criteria. A few examples of the criteria that will be optimized are change over, promise dates to customers, labor load leveling, shipping optimization, overtime reduction, raw materials availability and inventory management.

Another expert production reporting system is Material Requirements Planning. This type of software generally uses raw materials inventory, purchasing module, production scheduling and sales forecasting. Each of these systems can be configured to suit the customer’s specific needs and can be integrated with any additional software systems.

Another expert production reporting system is Material Requirements Planning. Typically, this type of software interconnects a raw materials inventory, purchasing module, production schedule and sales forecast in order to predict your future raw materials requirements. They can often be integrated with purchasing to automatically generate purchase orders. These systems also allow manufacturing facilities to obtain the information needed from the factory floor to optimize production and quality in a timely manor.