Skip to main content
Essential Software Solutions

  • Industrial Equipment Manufacturing
    ​Engineer-to-Order ERP Solutions

    Discover tailored ERP solutions for Industrial Equipment Manufacturers. Overcome the unique challenges of Engineer-to-Order (ETO) projects and service operations with Infor specialized ERP systems designed to optimize efficiency and drive growth.

ESS understands the unique challenges faced by Project/ETO Equipment Manufacturers and Service Organizations. Navigating volatile demand and fluctuating raw material prices, while managing change orders and customer expectations, is crucial. Successful equipment manufacturing relies on real time project management  robust project management, collaboration, supplier integration, and quality monitoring. Inventory planning is  complicated enough with slow-moving items and non-stocked material purchases. Dealer web portals help maintain your brand reputation by simplifying complex pricing matrices and after-market service. Additionally, attracting and retaining younger talent remains a persistent challenge for manufacturers in this sector.

Infor is designed for Equipment Manufacturers

3,000+

Industrial Machinery and 
Equipment Customers

25+

Years of Experience 
in Manufacturing

300+

Material Handling and 
Transport Manufacturers

Infor benefits include…

  • Meeting the needs of complex equipment manufacturers (high mix/low volume and low mix/high volume) all in one integrated system

  • Continuous visibility across your entire facility

  • Manage and balance internal capacity versus what should be sub-contracted. Tightly managing your supply chain throughout internal or external resources

  • Featuring end-to-end functionality
  • Accessible wherever you need it
  • Intuitive and user-friendly
  • Cost-effective ownership
Get in Touch
Production Management

Challenges

  • Multi –mode manufacturing within one system – project , work order or repetitive.
  • Subcontracting that provides visibility and connection with inside manufacturing.
  • Performance management and real time metrics to see how the plant is running.
  • Support for Lean and production methods.
  • Inability to see what is going on within the production floor – risk and uncertainty creates just in case inventory.
  • Schedule nightmares when trying to insert and run prototypes or low volume parts on a repetitive line.
  • Improper operating decisions due to bad information – excess or suboptimal  costs.

Infor Provides...

  • The ability to have flexible manufacturing – job orders, repetitive , projects – all in one solution – to meet the needs – depending on the type of product being made.
  • Continuous visibility of all manufacturing methods and steps – inside and outside is enabled – giving you the 360 degree operating view and enabling fact based real-time decisions.
  • The ability to handle sub contracting for those processes and products better suited to be made externally – then being able to manage the supply chain efficiently just as if the parts were made in house.
  • Shop floor reporting – and performance management – critical for attaining lean production.
Production Planning and Scheduling

Challenges

  • Complexity grows exponentially as product diversity increases. Each new product causes manufacturers to reconsider skills, capacity, set-up time, maintenance requirements, tooling and the list goes on.

Infor Provides...

  • Scenario planning for optimal performance
  • Complete operational visibility with alerts
  • Finite scheduling of people, processes and tooling
Complex Bills of Materials

Challenges

  • Different Bills of Materials are required for different configurations – perhaps even each finished part is slightly different.
  • Each Bill of Material May has unique configuration requirements ( for sequenced builds).
  • Without configuration management and a configuration BoMs, you would be creating separate BoMs for each configuration – and running them in a non repetitive method – losing all the efficiency of repetitive and lean.
  • Excess inventory will result from a planning process like MRP – which is not where you want to be.
  • Consolidation of demand becomes unmanageable.

Infor Provides...

  • Unique BoM structures for each unit configuration – each serialized item can have a separate BoM – yet be built in a high speed repetitive method. 
  • Configuration identification with each BoM data structure – by serial – and can be tied to the product, suppliers or sequence of the order.
Cost of Quality
Infor Quality management optimizes product management from one end of the supply chain to the other, helping you increase profitability and gain a competitive market advantage.
Issues / Challenge:   
  • Tracking non-conforming material is time consuming.
  • Disposition of this material to manage requires special processes.
  • The material must be blocked for movement during evaluation.

Impact:
  • Possible use of material that will not meet contractual quality requirements.
  • Penalties assessed because of the use of non-conforming material.
  • Loss of future contracts.
Infor provides...
  • Capabilities to manage non-conforming material.
  • Blocking of non-conforming material movement.
  • Serial / Lot control tracking of material with multiple dispositions.
Collaborative Engineering Design

Programs and products have become too complex for single people to solve themselves – the must draw on the collective knowledge of the organization.

Issue
  • Customer configuration / design requirements.
  • Design revisions.
  • Interoperability with suppliers.

Impact
  • Missed deadlines and delays of launches.
  • Inconsistency in engineering changes.
  • Sub optimal designs due to lack of collaboration.
Infor provides...
  • Project management with workflow, costing and resource management.
  • Combined engineering and manufacturing information flows increase quality.
  • Supplier and organizational collaboration improves efficiency.
Order Management
Issues:
  • Design changes, product substitutions, new products, changing orders – all of these put strain on your order management capabilities. Infor has created workflows to address unique and changing capabilities supported by order visibility through production.  Too, you can take advantage of EDI capabilities to further streamline the order management process.
Infor provides...
  • Handling releases and orders – EDI inbound, untouched by human hands, processed in near real time.
  • Release management – calculating the release schedules,– right down to the minute they need it. 
  • Meeting the other customer business practices such as labeling, returnable container use and tracking , freight management..
  • Making the order right – from initial receipt of the EDI to the outbound ASN – on time and correct – no rejections.– if the data is not right… the part is not right. 
Program Management
Issues:
  • Complex customer requirements require rigorous, integrated management. Infor offers complete and integrated program management that is critical for a new product launch. 
Infor provides...
  • Collaborative Environment – synchronization of engineering, procurement, manufacturing and customer across all stages of the product development process.
  • Project Management – leverage project management to manage and track programs and sub-projects from tasks and activities to costs.
  • Program Management – configurable workflow to support the product development process, supporting full-market launch by providing project status, risk and cost transparency.
  • Product Data Accessibility – singular source to access to product drawings and information in the appropriate context and format required for supply chain development.
Sales and Operations Planning
By synchronizing supply and demand, you are able to react to your customer’s needs without building excess just in case’ inventory, which consumes excess capital.  The result – lower operating costs and higher customer satisfaction. 
Issues:
  • Supply and demand are out of sync.
  • Poor customer order fill rates.
  • Excess inventory – often the wrong inventory.
  • Capital tied up in inventory
  • Poor manufacturing operating efficiency
  • Customer are not satisfied with you – perhaps poor supplier ratings and new business hold
Infor provides...
  • Synchronized supply with demand – optimizing inventory and production levels.
  • One unified system for supply, demand.
  • Increased customer satisfaction and performance – higher delivery performance.
  • Reduced whipsawing of production resources – level loading of production.
Planning and Scheduling
Issues:
  • Reacting to customer demand changes.
  • Level or optimizing production levels.
  • Reducing downtime and waste.

Impact:
  • Customer changes can not be met quickly due to inability to schedule JIT lines = poor customer satisfaction.
  • Excess overtime or expedited freight costs to meet demand. = Excessive costs.
  • Idle time / opportunity costs for certain lines while other lines overloaded. = Wasted resources.
Infor provides...
  • One common system to plan all assets across the enterprise – in synch – One vision.
  • Reduced idle time and inopportune  downtime ( visibility for maintenance + jobs + other activities).
  • Planning optimization to make sure all lines are level loaded – minimize waste,  overload.
Supply Chain Control
Supply chain visibility and control is critical to meeting customer demands.

Infor provides...
  • One system, one solution, one provider enables end to end supply chain readiness – without bolt ons and add ons.
  • A consolidated view of all requirements across all facets of the supply chain  – in context – provides knowledge of the supply dynamics in near real time. 
  • Managing all the activities of onboarding a supplier and then monitoring and measuring their performance.
  • Full end to end tracking, visibility and control of configurations.
Inbound / Outbound Logistics
Issues / Challenge:   
  • Inbound logistics – especially if global sourcing is utilized can be costly as well as can effect the scheduling of production.
  • Increased downtime and idle assets / resources – can drive up costs.
  • The need to have visibility - Supplier delivery ASN , Tracking – tied directly to receiving process with labeling – direct to production. 
  • Outbound logistics –special labeling, ASN.

Impact
  • If you are not tied tightly with your supply chain – you have to bulk up on ‘just in case’ inventory or have too many ‘back up’ plans to cover the unknowns.
  • This ties up resources and increases operating costs. 
  • Logistics often can consume 3-5% of material costs – in many cases– that is the margin.

Infor provides...
  • With Infor – management of logistics in a coordinated and lean model will reduce those wasted costs.
  • Also knowing when there is a problem – as soon as possible to then take action to correct the situation.
Material and Personnel Management
Information Anywhere
You are no longer tied to your desk to manage the business – by having information anywhere you can be on the plant floor, at a customer or supplier and still be totally in touch with the business so to enable fast decision making and reduced costs due to being out of communications.

Issues / Challenge:
  • Overwhelmed with reports and little information.
  • The cost to change and create reports continues rise and there never seems to be an end in sight.
  • New technology to report data and provide information is impossible to implement with disparate systems that are currently in place.

Infor provides...
  • Rapid on-line / real-time decision making capabilities using information from enterprise solutions.
  • Better decision support mechanisms for the enterprise.
  • Easily created reports using new technology.
Financial Alerting
Issues / Challenge:
  • Order entry / Release or shipping without the ability to easily check a customer’s current credit status is risky. 
  • Entering orders without a full customer credit check increases financial risk.
  • Shipping orders without credit checking increases financial risk.
  • Credit should be continually monitored up to shipping.
  • Customers can run up excessive credit with the risk of bad debts or late payment.
  • Customers can potentially continue to run up credit with the risk of bad debts.
  • Bad credit can negatively impact cash flow and put a business at risk.

Infor provides...
  • Cash planning with predictive accounts.
  • Holds and maximum credit levels.
  • Can stop order entry or shipping.

10 Critical ERP Requirements for Every Type of Manufacturing

It's not about buying ERP software - it's about choosing the right ERP solution. Download our ERP selection guide for industrial manufacturers, we've listed 10 critical requirements for all kind of manufacturers.

Infor Industrial Machinery & Equipment Portfolio

Read a Case Study

Read Case Study

Related Articles

Optimizing Multi-Site Operations in Discrete Manufacturing

Improving Shop Scheduling With Your New ERP System?

Navigating Between APS&MRP in Manufacturing

Talk with an ERP advisor

Do you have questions about ERP selection, ERP implementation, ERP trainings or any other issues with digital transformation? Talk with one of our advisor, we'd be glad to help you.


Don't hesitate to contact. Our client policy is 'no string attached'.