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In today's environment, manufacturers must be able to manage change. The most successful organizations are those that can rely on their front-line managers to create a more flexible and efficient company that serves the needs of the company's most valuable asset—its customers.

But first, you need to create a new kind of front-line manager. Individuals need the vision to see beyond department objectives and focus on company goals. Managers, planners, buyers and schedulers must be able to interact and communicate with people throughout the business. Work center managers need the tools to handle all aspects of production efficiency, from schedules and materials to machine and labor capacity. Across the shop floor, everyone needs to manage fading departmental lines and expanding responsibilities.

The Foresight Software product suite helps you enable and empower this new kind of organization. With our integrated, front and back office solution, you get an effortless flow of information from sales to manufacturing to financials. All of your departments have consistent access to accurate information, creating a common base of communication. And all of your users have the visibility and integration they need to respond to changing customers and markets.

Manufacturing is a vital component of MXP Enterprise Resource Planning, the back office of this solution. The application features easy-to-use functionality that lets users quickly get the information they need. Whether your operation is make-to-stock, assemble-to-order, MRP II, JIT or job shop, MXP Manufacturing will help you get the most out of your inventory and production capacity while providing critical management support through forecasting, reporting and costing.

Manufacturing's functional areas include Bill of Material, Manufacturing Resource Planning, Production Activity Control and Job Shop.

Bill of Material (BOM) is the core component of Foresight's Manufacturing system. It provides a consistent base of communication for all users, from engineering to purchasing to floor personnel to accounting. Because of its mission critical role, we have made Bill of Material extremely flexible and easy to use.

• Allow different departments to use separate BOMs (e.g., prototype BOMs for engineering, costing BOMs for accounting)
• Create multilevel, single-level and open-ended BOMs to match your business need msimagelistmsimagelist Define unlimited roll-up points in multilevel BOMs to evaluate level-by-level and cumulative costs and lead times
• Maintain BOMs with easy engineering change notices (ECNs) that include unlimited pages of explanatory notes
• Use extended "phantoms" on BOMs to better manage service parts
• Treat phantom orders as regular items or phantom items on individual BOMs

• Track and evaluate job costs based on traditional and activity-based costing methods
• Define and track material and labor burden, operations, work centers and machines for improved product costing

• Use manufacturing gates to manage production flow and create WIP in a "work orderless" environment
• Improve management of JIT manufacturing by backflushing raw materials to specified manufacturing gates
• Manually override product flow routings to redistribute capacity to meet tight deadlines

• Enterprise-wide item management
• Improve order entry functions with automatic product configuration, which walks the user through final assembly features and options
• Drill up or down for system-wide item visibility

Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) lets you analyze available information to create optimum scheduling and capacity resource planning. Your planners have the visibility they need, from fully detailed parts and item information to the master production schedule and materials requirement plan.

• Perform MRP in net change mode for faster recalculation or use full regenerative mode
• Maintain smooth operations with regular exception reports to identify problems early
• View a detailed time phase inventory from the last MRP run
• Create two-level master production schedules
• Produce simulated production schedules and forecasts
• Use blow-through logic for raw materials planning

• Improve forecasting by comparing past plans with actual results
• Forecast MRP by customer, salesperson, territory or warehouse

• Updates the forecast to show sales and WIP to prevent "double-driving"
• Overrides forecast planning with up-to-date sales data
• Peg upward from online work orders directly to sales orders to prioritize production
• Create consumption forecasts
• Zoom directly to pegging details for each demand and receipt

• Report capacity levels
• Drive capacity requirements planning from MRP

Production Activity Control (PAC) executes your requirements plans and manages the actual production process. You can tailor the application to the way your operation works to more efficiently control vital production processes.

• Manage "push" production with work orders and automatic scheduling, or use a JIT "pull" system with "work orderless" backflushing
• Accommodate parallel manufacturing
• Manage WIP accounting
• Check components online to ensure materials availability prior to scheduling work
• View job priorities by work centers and due dates
• Process barcode labels and time sheets

• Track and schedule work orders
• Create final assembly work orders from sales orders
• Generate work orders for specific customers and due dates
• Automatically generate pick lists, dispatch lists and travelers with work orders

• Report planned vs. actual efficiency and utilization for labor, work centers, machines and other production factors
• Analyze variances at aggregate (e.g. product assembly) and detail (e.g. individual operator) levels
• View work order headers by work order number or item number
• Directly zoom to all supporting information on work orders
• Access labor information associated with work orders, including time sheet details for each labor element

Job Shop lets you control all the complex variables of the custom manufacturing environment. You can easily maintain pricing, estimates and production schedules for make-to-order and engineer-to-order products.

• Create bills of materials on the fly using temporary, "one of" items
• Easily prepare job estimates online without committing resources
• Create and estimate new items in a single step
• Copy and modify information from existing jobs to easily create similar jobs
• Produce multilevel structures

• Retain the actual cost of completed items for the life of the job
• Create more accurate pricing by combining traditional overhead calculations with target-margin markups

• Schedule the critical production path based on due date, machine availability and other factors
• View approved work orders and jobs in a graphical timeline format
• Zoom directly to all related information for a job, item or estimate
• Control job shop items through Manufacturing Resource Planning for better planning and scheduling
• Automatically generate work orders and customer quotes to feed sales and invoice systems

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