Article
Optimizing Plex to maximize value
June 2, 2021 · Authored by Thomas Miller, Stephen Salata
During the virtual PowerPlex 2021 conference, Thomas Miller, director, and Stephen Salata, manager in Baker Tilly’s Enterprise Manufacturing and Operations Solutions group presented “Optimizing Plex to Maximize Value.” In the presentation, they discussed how companies invest significant resources – both in terms of dollars and people – to implement Plex, but often they overlook opportunities to create additional value with our ERP solutions for manufacturing.
These opportunities include people, process and technology improvements. By utilizing a defined optimization approach, companies can identify gaps in their systems and processes, and develop and implement plans to address them. In turn, this helps the companies achieve additional value across a variety of critical areas.
Optimization triggers
We have highlighted six key warning signs that your company needs some form of Plex optimization to more efficiently run your business:
- Reports require manual intervention – With today’s technology, you should not be spending time manually editing reports either for format or content. Plex has a massive library of reports and tools that can help you get the information you need in the format you require.
- Customer order delivery promises are not reliable – You should know exactly when you can ship an order based on your current production schedules, capacity, and raw materials and inventory. When those factors are not clear, there is room for optimization.
- Inventory adjustments are frequent – If you aren’t running an inventory adjustments report on a regular basis, you should be doing so. These reports show if people on the shop floor are following best practices or if they are taking shortcuts.
- Cost/month-end closing large variance – If you’re seeing large variances at month-end, there is likely a root cause (or multiple causes) that should be addressed immediately.
- Disparate and external systems are in use – If you’re running Plex, you should not need a lot of other systems to support your business. Plex can help you reduce your IT footprint by eliminating other programs that are redundant with Plex, or with each other.
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