How Cloud ERP Provides Visibility for Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing tools have been around for more than 25 years, and they continue to deliver value to manufacturers. In fact, lean is essentially a focus on value-add across the product lifecycle and results in rigorous efforts to eliminate waste in manufacturing. Attempting to run a growing company using paper-based processes however will yield only one result: it’s not sustainable if you want to create a lean production environment.

FT Precision Inc., a Japanese-parented, Ohio-based, automotive chassis and engine component supplier, found itself facing challenges with manual inventory control. After more investigation, the bigger problem appeared to be that each department owned a piece of the data needed to build a real picture of inventory levels.

The company replaced manual processes with a cloud manufacturing ERP solution for more visibility into inventory levels but soon found out that it got much more. Whenever a process occurs on the shop floor it’s updated in the finance system if it has a commercial impact. Senior management knows exactly what is happening on the shop floor. Quality and compliance work together to comply with data security regulations—and the system does the required reporting.