Whether they’re re-manufacturing mobile phones, making parts for NASA’s International Space Station or producing small batches of custom products in a job shop, industrial manufacturers play an important role in the overall manufacturing sector.
Many of these manufacturers found themselves in a tight position in 2021, with raw material shortages on one side and high demand for their products on the other. While they were accustomed to working with three-month raw material forecasts, supply chain shortages forced them to begin producing one-year forecasts and order timelines.
“A lot of industrial manufacturers use ‘bolt-on’ applications to solve specific problems (e.g. one for quality control and another to manage tooling) and wind up creating many different ‘data islands’.” –Piyas Bandyopadhyay, CEO and Master Principal Consultant, Paapri Cloud Technologies
“NetSuite is the cake and we provide the frosting for that cake with the goal of making it even more palatable for our manufacturing customers.” Piyas Bandyopadhyay, CEO and Master Principal Consultant, Paapri Cloud Technologies.
A Need for New Technology
As manufacturers look for new ways to conserve cash and cut costs, they’re discovering that their disjointed applications can’t support those efforts. With data stored in multiple systems, companies need to piece together bits of information to get a clear picture of operational performance. Sales forecasting, demand planning and labor management are equally as challenging, as is maintaining profitability and margins.
As supply chain disruptions drag on, manufacturers are also facing a labor shortage, high employee turnover and an increasingly demanding customer base. Worried about extended order lead times, those buyers are requesting more detailed data and better supply chain visibility. They want to know where their orders are in the supply chain, how long they will take to fulfill and when they will arrive at their facilities. High-growth manufacturers using QuickBooks, Excel spreadsheets, inventory management applications like Fishbowl and scheduling applications like TSheets can’t readily answer those questions.
Without a centralized financial and inventory management platform, manufacturers end up wasting a lot of time, money and effort with manual processes. These approaches may have been sufficient for a smaller company operating pre-COVID, but they quickly became liabilities as organizations began to grow.
A Laser Focus on Manufacturing
Laser-focused on the manufacturing industry, Paapri has spent years addressing its customers’ biggest pain points and coming up with solutions to those problems by integrating its applications with NetSuite.
The Paapri Manufacturing Console (PMC) is situated next to a workstation on the shop floor and used to manage jobs from concept to completion. From this application, manufacturers can receive orders, procure materials, gather necessary information and start/stop jobs. The console is available in a tablet version direct from Paapri, which also produces the hardware for applications, and integrates directly with NetSuite.
Multiple users can badge in and out of the PMC and NetSuite takes over where the console leaves off and manages the back-end processes for each job.
Knowing that quality control is a big concern for manufacturers, Paapri also developed a robust quality management system (QMS) that integrates directly with NetSuite. Paapri QMS ensures that products meet predetermined quality specifications like AS9000, ISO9000 and ISO1400. Manufacturers also know that the processes, preventions, statistical processing controls and information captures are done correctly every time. This gives organizations data right at their fingertips, instead of in a separate spreadsheet on someone’s computer or in a different software system.
Effective Tooling Management
Understanding how vital good tooling management is to industrial manufacturers, Paapri also offers an inter-tooling application that stores, distributes, calibrates and refurbishes their tools. Additionally, Paapri built job scheduling and engineer-to-order applications, the latter of which manages the intricate process of engineering and manufacturing custom projects. Each of these applications connects directly into NetSuite, eliminating the need for disparate financial systems, spreadsheets and databases.
Through its Manufacturing Center of Excellence (MCOE), Paapri is continually building out new functionality that high-growth manufacturers can use to work more efficiently. With an in-house group of technical and functional experts, plus several Six Sigma Green BeltsTM (professionals who are well versed in the core-to-advanced elements of Lean Six Sigma Methodology), Paapri finds solutions to solve its customers’ most pressing problems.
Eliminating Manual Systems and Leveraging Automation
Once in place, NetSuite and Paapri’s industry- specific applications help manufacturing customers eliminate manual processes, save time once spent shuttling data between systems and consolidates manufacturing, inventory management, job scheduling and financial management onto a single cloud ERP system.
Rather than spending their days manipulating spreadsheets and trying to align different technology systems, employees can focus on innovation, production and customer service. Using Paapri QMS, engineers can easily manage requests for deviations, measure material removal rates and take steps to improve product quality while also improving process productivity.
With NetSuite as the foundation and Paapri’s expertise, applications and hardware layered on top, high-growth industrial manufacturers get a cost- effective, user-friendly system that’s tailored to their specific needs.