Although PowerCerv (now Verticent) did not intentionally focused on any particular industry, its product has found place within many metal fabricators in a make-to-order (MTO), configure-to-order (CTO), and make-to-stock (MTS) environments. This may very well help Verticent to secure its position in the competitive ERP landscape. For additional information on Verticent’s background see The Strengths of a Vertically Centric Enterprise Software Provider.

Part two of the The Strengths of a Vertically Centric Enterprise Software Provider series.

Basically, Verticent’s solution, ERP Plus, provides tools that metal fabricators need to streamline their quoting, order entry, inventory control, production, labor collection, shipping, and invoicing processes. Like many peer products, ERP Plus can typically help manage a gamut of production activities from sales order release to work order closing. It can enable reviews of near real time information about operations and products on the shop floor; give users the ability to respond rapidly to customer demands; streamline planning, scheduling, and purchasing; track material and labor; and ensure consistency and accuracy across the shop floor. For users with international needs, Verticent provides international date formats, custom documentation, and supports international phone numbers and addresses. Also, its full multicurrency support allows enterprises to conduct transactions in foreign currencies and translate receipt amounts to the base currency for actual costing.

ERP Plus also allows shop floor supervisors and planners to deliver job dispatches electronically; simulate finite loading and post their plan at work centers; and use electronic Kanban to pull demand through the shop. Finite scheduling capabilities may also enable users to create more accurate production schedules based on finite capacity constraints and simulate schedule changes by conducting what-if scenarios. Built-in workflow management capabilities can then send action messages to specific individuals, notifying them when their actions are needed and keeping everyone informed.

Also, machine operators can be more efficient by building the right product at the right time, by accessing electronic drawings and process information. They can report production, labor, scrap, and quality issues with relative ease in near real time. Additionally, Verticent solutions easily manage distribution requirements across multiple facilities, if required. This functionality allows employees in different facilities to access inventory information by tracking movements, allocations, movement histories, and inventory transfers.

The product has also been used by industrial machinery and equipment manufacturers and distributors, which tend to value product configuration features, as well as planning and production, inventory control/management, manufacturing resource planning (MRP), finite scheduling, and workflow management functionalities. As will be described later, although some of these functionalities are delivered via partnerships with third party providers, Verticent (and former PowerCerv) insists that some core competency functional capabilities cannot be obtained this way, and instead require a deeper level of native integration.

The best example is product configuration, which requires a tremendous amount of integration deep within an enterprise resource management (ERP) system because it leverages the item master, bill of material (BOM), work operations (routing), costing/pricing, work order management, sales order, and sales quote management information. Configurators are need to, for example, add or change an operation, change the work center where the operation is performed, change the run rate on that operation, and change the set-up time. They also need to produce special instructions or comments on the work order, sales order, or invoice (see Product Configurators Pave the Way for Mass Customization). Further, each of those parameters affects cost, and the available-to-promise (ATP) date. Therefore, the third party product approach lands itself with problems like redundant data elements that need to be repeatedly and tediously synchronized between disparate databases and systems. It also leads to very common problems such as different user interfaces (look and feel), different release schedules, programming languages, and in some cases, even different database technologies.