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you need an MES for manufacturing

not all tools are built to run a shop

Your ERP may track your finances, people, vendors and invoices, but it cannot track your work.  It wasn't built for manufacturing.  When you need a hole, you get a drill.  When you need a measurement, you use a caliper.   When you need to run your manufacturing shop, you get a manufacturing system. 

Choose an MES.  Choose Quantum.

THE QUANTUM PLATFORM

production control

A tool for your production team must handle real production problems.  Things are constantly moving and you can't wait for the right answer.  When machines are down, work backs up and schedules get behind.  What will your ERP do with any of those?  Nothing.  You suffer through.

You need an MES.  You need Quantum.

Discover Production Control  that Works for Manufacturing Today

scheduling

Your production schedule is constantly moving.  It needs to address time, people, materials, machines, and work centers.  You need materials and instructions at the right place at the right time.  How can your ERP connect all 4 of these critical resources?  It won't.  You get behind. 

You need an MES.  You need Quantum. 

Unlock Proactive Production Management with Quantum

on-time promises

On-time orders begin the moment the job is assigned.  Things that go wrong in one job tend to affect everything else.  Work gets backed up and schedules get out-of-whack.  Your team struggles to get anything to the dock.  How's your ERP going to manage all that?  It doesn't.  

You need an MES.  You need Quantum.

See How You Can Manage Schedules and Ship On Time with Quantum

what's an ERP? 

Your ERP helps you manage your core, operational business processes.  They are rule-based and operate well under the premise that things follow patterns.  The entire ERP database is an interlocking web of data columns and tables.  You have a list of customers, vendors, employees, accounts, bills, invoices, etc.  The ERP organizes and reports on these.  It is an historical view of your business.  

This same system operates poorly when faced with the challenges that you have every day on the shop floor.  Things move and change constantly.  Some days, nothing goes according to plan.  And that system?  It can tell you how it went yesterday but it will struggle to shift real-time with the jobs, materials, people, machines and work on your shop floor.  

workflow vs. routing

An ERP will give you a simple routing - a list of steps your team needs to perform to complete a job.  Nuances of the work and small pieces of the workflow are lost here.  There's lost efficiency, too, by sacrificing a true MES workflow for a list of steps.  

In Quantum, the routing is just the first step in the process of doing work right.  You need time and cost associated with those individual pieces.  Maybe you need some instructions for your team - how to do work right and how to avoid errors and inconsistencies. 

beyond the job packet

Your ERP and your network files may help you create a job packet that you post on a board or slide into a plastic sleeve.  This packet is not helping your team do their work.  It's doing very little for you actually.  

A Quantum job packet moves well beyond a list of work.  Is it possible for two operators to work simultaneously on two different parts of a job?  Almost impossible on paper or without a full-time supervisor or team lead running around managing it all.  Harried.  Need the work to be done from step 1 to step 5 without pause?  Or with stops?  Do you send out work and wait for it to come back?  Quantum takes care of all of it for you so you can spend your time on customer development and service. 

a moving schedule

The ERP will provide a "schedule" of work.  It's not always a live schedule, updating for things as they happen in real time.  It helps you to get a list for today, but provides little assistance throughout the day as things shift. 

Quantum gives you a true, movable, real-time, updated schedule.  On a calendar, in a list or in an agile "swim lane" view.  See what's happening in real-time as it's going on.  Watch Quantum expand and contract the time allotments as work moves faster or slower through the process than you're expecting.  Solve problems with bottlenecks by opening up work, splitting it between work cells and reprioritizing the items that have to get done immediately.  A true digital schedule for your ever-changing needs. 

predictive work

Your ERP gives you a list of work.  It tells you how long a job should take.  It does not know when that's going to be done and when you'll be able to ship it to your customer with reliable promises.  It can't keep up with the daily movement of the shop.

With Quantum, you can predict ship dates with higher accuracy.  Know when something's going to be late and take action on it.  See the impact first-hand and make additional changes if you have to.  Make promises to your customers that you can keep. 

what else do you want to know?

For a lighter read, dive into our blog.  

If you want to know more about how we helped your competitors, see what we've done in aerospace, composite manufacturing, electrical assembly, engineered parts and medical device. 

Or start at the beginning with our MES primers for plant managers, quality managers, operations managers and owners.