The Planning Process… Why Spreadsheets and ERP Are Failing to Provide Effective Control
In the current competitive Fashion environment, Apparel, Footwear and Textile companies face an increasing number of challenges including intense price pressures, the need to respond quickly to ever-changing customer requirements, quoting reliable delivery dates; also maintaining product quality, amongst others. As a result, during recent years many businesses have recognised the need to invest in systems, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, which manage and coordinate many transactional activities in a single business-wide application (i.e. sales order processing, inventory management, raising purchase orders and controlling finance).
The majority, if not all, of ERP systems offer some planning functions, but do not support the planning process with the required visibility or flexibility that is of crucial importance in today’s Apparel, Textile and Footwear supply chain. As a result, the vast majority of organisations still maintain spreadsheets to manage these activities, whilst acknowledging that these also fail to provide the required level of visibility and coordination.
Fast React Systems recognised the absence of effective systems in this area and has developed a range of highly visual, flexible planning solutions specifically to meet the needs of today’s fashion industry.
Contemporary ERP systems - total market valued at $66.6 billion in 2003 (AMR Research) representing 43 percent of the applications budgets of organisations - support numerous business processes and administrative functions. However, the majority, if not all, of these transaction based ERP systems either very weak or extremely complex to the point of being unuseable in the planning function. The inherent design and architecture of these systems, means that they are not able to perform fast, visual and effective planning. Although many ERP solutions promise fully integrated planning, they simply fail to deliver. This is evidenced by the huge number of companies who are forced to continue to manage these functions ‘off system’ in the absence of adequate functionality. The planner is not able to visualise all the information pertinent to the planning process. For effective and efficient planning the planner needs to coordinate the total demand, any required critical path activities, supplier capacity and sufficient lead time to produce, the required materials and their availability, and the total order position, i.e. current supplier performance, plus the effect of all new orders and changes on the existing order book.
Whilst usually considered preferable to the available ERP system options, spreadsheets are incapable of delivering the level of coordination and business wide visibility required in the modern Apparel industry supply chain. As the pressures facing the industry continue to increase, many companies recognise the need to improve their performance by addressing their manual spreadsheet methods. But where can they turn?
Visibility, Coordination and Control
Fast React Systems recognised the significant functionality gap between existing ERP solutions and Spreadsheets and has developed a range of highly visual, easy-to-use and flexible solutions that allows the planner the ability to visualise the plan and view all planning constraints (e.g. materials, critical path constraints and available capacity options) graphically on screen, thus enabling a highly effective and efficient planning process. Fastreact can work on a stand alone basis or linked to an existing ERP system to leverage maximum benefit from existing data. It provides an essential management tool when trying to offer the best customer service and to stay competitive in today’s highly aggressive fashion marketplace.
