Do Your Manufacturing Information Systems Talk?

The world of manufacturing continues to evolve rapidly with increasingly complex products, higher customer expectations and a slew of regulatory requirements. Manufacturers rely heavily on their manufacturing information systems, such as their Infor SyteLine ERP system, to meet these changing needs and requirements.

Important communication should occur between the engineering and design processes, procurement, and the manufacturing floor. In order to optimize collaboration and communication between these departments, an often overlooked area is to take a look at your manufacturing information systems to make sure they are aligned with business goals, are aiding your employees in achieving those goals, and are utilizing up-to-date technology.

In many cases, a manufacturer’s CAD and ERP systems are completely separate. Data housed in one must be manually reentered into the other, which is a major source of wasted time for engineers. Departments share documents via email, which can lead to file confusion and departments working with out-of-date data.

With CADLink, your ERP and CAD system can talk to each other. Data is passed bidirectionally between your CAD and your ERP to handle engineering changes in both systems at one time.  CADLink takes CAD data directly from the on screen drawing and pushes it directly to your ERP through a SyteLine CAD interface and SyteLine BOM import. When all of your departments are working with the same, always up-to-date data, you’ll be making life easier for everyone.

Additionally, by synchronizing both your engineering CAD data and the manufacturing floor data found in your ERP, you can:

Even with these benefits, manufacturers must be able to justify the ROI of synchronizing their CAD and ERP. The majority of CADLink implementations can be done in less than a month with a typical ROI of less than 6 months. Engineers can be trained to use CADLink in less than an hour! CADLink comes equipped with the features engineers need the most, reducing the need for costly and time consuming customizations.