Driven by complex supply chains, intricate sales channels, and increasing customer demands, midsize manufacturers turn to the cloud for solutions

By Brian Hodgson

In today’s competitive and global economy, knowing your customers and understanding what you have to sell is not enough. Customers are demanding more: Do you have it in stock, has it been built, and when will it be delivered? Layered onto these increased demands are even more complex supply chains and sales channels. Customers may buy direct or purchase through one or more ecommerce channels, which may be local or on the other side of the world.

Furthermore, as a manufacturer, your supply chain is intricate. You are constantly balancing costs, customer service, and complexity. You may source from overseas, want to leverage processes such as vendor-managed inventory (VMI) or automated re-order points. You may be trying to expand into new geographies. These used to be the challenges for the Global 1000. Today, however, companies of any size can be global.

In talking with Oz Development’s joint NetSuite customers, the level of innovation and growth is remarkable. Global trade, ecommerce, and cloud-based IT have enabled these companies to be winners. The flip side is that it also opens up for increased competition, raising the question: As a manufacturer, how can you compete? How do NetSuite and its partners enable your growth?

The Balancing Act for Midsize Manufacturers
As a manufacturer, growth and success are based on managing three key dimensions.

Customers: Customers want to know, in real time: Do you have it? When can they get it? How much is it? Ebay and Amazon have set this expectation. Even in a B2B manufacturing world, knowing your finished goods and components inventory is critical to sales—not just operational costs.

Costs: Do you have the visibility, control, and automation to drive maximum performance with minimal costs? Can you answer questions like: Are we keeping up with orders today? Where are builds on the shop floor? Do we have the right parts, assemblies, and staff for our order mix? As your revenue grows, how can you keep costs in check?

Complexity: How many channels do you serve? How many products or configurations do you manufacture? How does this impact your order management and visibility? What are your supplier relationships? Each of these “spokes” can drive the complexity of your manufacturing and supply chain processes.

The key is to manage these three Cs while remaining agile. While customers drive everything, costs and complexities are constraints to be managed. Until recently, there was a lack of options for midsize manufacturers. Typically, they’d have older legacy systems— often homegrown, not scalable, and very rigid. The IT staff got bogged down from simply maintaining these, never able to add the value that drives a business. However, with NetSuite and its partners, two critical enablers are available: 1) a cloud- based manufacturing suite; and 2) connectivity to operations, partners, customers, and suppliers. Together, these form the Five Cs of NetSuite Manufacturing.

Growth and Agility through Cloud and Connectivity
NetSuite is driving the cloud and innovation for manufacturing organizations that require inventory management with dynamic replenishment, production planning, warehouse management, financial accounting and costing, customer and partner relationship management, and ecommerce.

NetSuite’s open architecture enables easy system integration with the supply chain, and leverages partners such as Oz Development. NetSuite includes specific capabilities for demand planning, production planning, production engineering, shop floor control, manufacturing control, cost control, project control, lot and serial control, and multi-division/multi-site solutions.

OzLINK delivers the connectivity to key manufacturing activities on the shop floor that extend NetSuite and ensure users gain the maximum value from a cloud-based supply chain. OzLINK solutions bring real-time visibility to all the key manufacturing operations, allowing users to:

• Seamlessly manage receiving and update purchase orders status in real time.
• Use a mobile computer to ensure that NetSuite matches physical inventory for components, raw materials, and finished goods.
• Dispatch and manage work orders on the shop floor and capture work in progress.
• Efficiently perform inventory put away, moves, and picks—all leveraging NetSuite bin capabilities.
• Integrate shipping information and generate ASNs from the finished goods warehouse.

Connecting the manufacturing floor real time into NetSuite enables manufacturers to service their customers much more effectively with lower costs and reduced complexity. Let’s look at each of these elements.

Customers’ heightened demands and expectations can be realized with NetSuite and OzLINK. With both, manufacturers can answer customer questions including: Do you have the item in stock? When can I get the item? I want to change my order, how many have you built? I ordered additional parts through your website, how much did that cost?

A manufacturer’s major costs are tied up in inventory, equipment, and personnel. On the manufacturing floor, they need to ensure these resources are used in an optimized way. Because OzLINK provides real- time updates on work orders, assembly builds, fulfillment, and inventory, the operations team has all the information it needs for a streamlined operation. Whether it is re-routing work orders, ordering more components, or adding staff to work through a peak, the visibility and flexibility of NetSuite and OzLINK enables users to be more agile without superfluous costs.

Finally, to tackle complexity with cloud-based manufacturing, NetSuite is the system of record. With traditional manufacturing applications, there are too many silos: purchasing, sales, accounting, manufacturing, warehousing. Often this means fragmented IT systems with poor or batch type integration, multiple copies of the information, or delays in getting to the “right” information and making the best decisions.

About Author

Brian provides strategy and execution of Oz Development’s sales and marketing. His responsibilities include market strategy, go-to-market, marketing/communications, sales channels, and demand management activities to drive Oz Development’s growth strategies. Prior to Oz Development, Brian was Chief Marketing Officer for Kewill PLC, a global software provider specializing in trade and logistics solutions. Brian brings more than 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing to Oz Development, having held executive sales, marketing and business development roles at Kewill, Eleven Technology, and SupplyWorks. Brian holds a BA degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

The statements and opinions contained herein are those of Oz Development and not of NetSuite. NetSuite has not verified any statements or claims herein and assumes no responsibility for such statements or claims.