ERP Software for Manufacturing - With specific focus on contract manufacturing

Our eco-system from development to providing manufacturing support, spanning 2 companies requires a lot of tracking and verification of Bill Of Material (BOM), Version control of BOM, Physical Material (components, raw material, parts to be fabricated) and so on.

Our operations are unique since we have a full eco-system that starts from idea stage -> POC -> Working Prototype -> Product which spans across two companies. During this course of converting from idea to product and eventually to bulk manufacture it is extremely important to manage the operations effectively with good tracking of material and processes involved. So we decided to build a custom ERP Software that helps in our unique eco-system - which can help us right from Prototype to productioon stage.

This ERP software further helps streamline common parts across different products and source from a single point, helps in accurate version control and material in and out tracking from stores.

We have so far made 4 new releases of software as we built our Manufacturing operations at Ideas Manufacturing Mysore Private Limited..

Some of the features we have planned for this software:

• Inventory Management, Tracking
• Complete Store Management
  • Material In/Out records
  • Material stock reporting
  • Inventory cost reporting
  • Inventory Shortage Projection reports for particular builds
  • Tracking of Long Lead items for procurement
  • Tracking of material that needs fabrication and its lead times.
  • Material IN/OUT Gatepass generation from system
• IQC Procedures and Quality Control Aspects
  • Inward Quality Control related aspects
• Bill of Material Management, Version Control
  • Elemination of Duplicate Part numbers in system
  • New Part Creation, Extensive parameters
  • Sub-Assembly creation, management
  • Version Control of BOM
  • Embedding of 'Processes' into BOM and eventually into costing
• Day to Day activity Management
  • Generation of Purchase Orders from Shortage reports
  • Features required for Just-in-Time Manufacturing
• Many more features as the system matures....

Genesis of our in-house ERP

This project started off originally as a training exercise for an apprentice (Nikhil Setty R) in our lab. The Version 0.1 of this software was developed by an apprentice undergoing mentoring on Desktop/Database programming in our lab based on the requirements we had set for him.

The output was impressive and also we could see the potential of the idea of a custom ERP dedicated to manage work in our environment where we develop productsfrom an idea and have specific focus in manufacturing and outsource lots of work to ISO 9000 compliant contract manufacturers. So we decided to convert it into a full-scale project, which will be field tested in our manufacturing setup for a few years, and develop features into the system based on need.

Eventually, we plan to turn this into a PRODUCT from Ideas Unlimited, as we are sure many manufacturers will be facing the same critical issues that we face in our setup. We are right now into Version 0.4. Since the Version 0.1 was developed as part of mentoring program, this product has evolved with a lot of features that make mamagement of store, bill of material and costs easy. But it will be several man years of effort, before we can launch this as a formal product.

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