Process manufacturers like you get the tools to protect brand integrity, dramatically reduce regulatory risk, and bring high-quality, least-cost formulation-based products to market more quickly. Plus, you’ll be better able to meet regulations such as FDA, REACH, and Chemicals Compliance and drive new product innovation.
Infor Optiva is a cutting-edge technology that enhances the Product Lifecycle Management product suite for process manufacturers. This tool is for process manufacturers looking for a competitive edge that will make them more efficient and provide the much-needed advantage for getting their products to market faster and more cost-efficiently. It allows companies to become more agile and responsive to customers, and their product performance will increase.

Click here to read the brochure.

As a long-time professional in cloud solutions, I can sometimes be struck by how uniform the information, discussion and debate is about the differences in cloud in the IT industry, whether from journalists, analysts or industry colleagues. Usually speaking in sweeping terms about the cloud and making everything from inaccurate statements to generalizing conclusions based on the cloud description. In this blog post, I want to help you understand the differences in clouds in relation to ERP solutions. It's all about the level of responsibility, agility and security.

Many organizations tend to view warehouse operations as cost centers due to the labor, equipment, and physical inventory. However, with business models rapidly changing through e-commerce, omnichannel, curbside pickup, 3D printing, and more, warehouse operations empower a company to gain a competitive advantage by ensuring customer loyalty and brand excellence stay intact as products enter the last mile.

Common warehousing challenges

Warehouse directors understand the challenges most, if not all, distribution centers manage. These challenges cover a wide range of issues which include picking optimization, inventory management, operational strategy, employee management, returns, and much, much more.

Picking challenges

For example, a large amount of productivity is often lost due to insufficient item master data. Poor inventory placement across the warehouse can result in increased costs and reduced productivity without the correct item and location slotting for concepts such as seasonality, promotional activities, and sales projections.

Furthermore, many companies lack visibility into inventory quantity and location accuracy due to a heavy reliance on spreadsheets, pick sheets, the absence of cycle counts, capacity constraints, or a lack of digital monitoring together. No visibility into inventory quantities or throughput can result in declining fulfillment rates, stockouts & backorders, decreased service levels, and waning customer loyalty and sales opportunities.

Managing global freight and ocean container movement now requires more dedicated insight as companies have expanded internationally. And no event outside of COVID-19 has exposed just how extensive, yet fragile, logistics networks and capacity flows have become over the last several decades.

To adapt, some manufacturers have adopted progressive supply chain approaches that move from "lean models to more flexible ones like "sense and respond." But not all businesses have successfully met the challenges.

Globalization forces supply chains to consider all events, from regional holidays and ocean weather patterns to geo-political turmoil and currency fluctuations. Moreover, 2020 introduced yet another element: navigating a global pandemic.

It’s a moment of enormous opportunity, with Industry 4.0 transforming the way businesses collect, process, and deploy data, and Maintenance 4.0 applying those tools and techniques to revolutionize asset management.

A strategic approach to Asset Performance Management (APM) helps you keep critical equipment and production lines up and running, using the mountains of operational data now available to help you track equipment performance, anticipate the need for maintenance, and prevent breakdowns before they occur. But even in steady economic times, and certainly in the midst of a global pandemic, the decision to embrace the new technology will always be guided by the bottom line: Will the cost of the new system be justified by the efficiencies and cost savings it delivers?

Infor’s Best Practice Guide, “Why your EAM strategy must evolve to increase food safety,” focuses on five specific, tangible benefits of APM, to help you make an informed decision on an approach that will soon be the price of entry for successful business operations in the 21st century.

When companies rely on a dated warehouse management system (WMS) to run their distribution centers, it’s not uncommon with the IT staff familiar with the system to move on. Unfortunately, this leaves the company without an in-house expert to manage issues as they arise. Plus, if the original vendor is no longer supporting that version of the system, it can be incredibly difficult to get the system back up and running.

Over time, each organization builds the distribution ecosystem that uniquely addresses its needs. The challenge emerges when only a handful of people understand how to manage and maintain that system successfully and perhaps only one individual truly understands the complete picture. With a mission critical WMS and corresponding data at the very core of the business, any scenario that puts it at risk is can be detrimental to getting products out the door.