Andrea Jones argues you need to design the right process before automating it. She uses manufacturing examples like FIFO versus pull systems to show how the wrong process automated just locks in bad habits. AJC helps companies choose ERP systems by facilitating discussions and bringing in operations experts.
So it's time to automate in your business, meaning you've gotten a new system or you're buying some new software or you're even using your existing software more completely and using all of the functionality that it has for your processes. You want to make sure that whatever you automate in this system is the right process. And what do I mean by that? Let's say, and we have this example happen to us recently, you're a manufacturer. And you operate on FIFO. So first in, first out. You get an order, that's what you make first, that's what you ship first. Distribution would work the same way. You get an order, you're going to assemble that and ship it out. First in, first out, FIFO. What if not all of the components for your product or things that you're packaging together to distribute and ship out are available? So in other words, you have gaps in your supply chain, or you haven't ordered enough, or you don't have inventory. Do you still want to occupy, especially in manufacturing, that work-in-progress space? You want to put something on a piece of equipment only to have it sit and wait later? Or instead of doing a straight-up FIFO, do you want to do a pull system? So, your manufacturing equipment, whatever the bottleneck is, is pulling into it whatever order has all of the components available to be made so it can go through the system streamlined completely. And same thing in distribution. Do you want to pull the orders that have everything in the backlog available on the shelf so that they can be shipped and off the books immediately and have a pull system in your inventory? Not to mention, if you have a lot of requests for the same grouping of things, you probably need to have a system that can pull your reorder points a little differently than the way it is. The point I'm making here is if you haven't designed a great process that really fits your future needs, Whatever you automate might not be right. People automate to make things faster, to make them more consistent, and to reduce human errors. And those things might happen. They still, however, might not be automating the right process. If you need to look at your processes before you automate, which by the way is always what AJC does first when we help companies with ERP selection. We look at their processes and their requirements. If you need to do that, we can both facilitate that conversation with your subject matter experts in your team to help understand where you're going, not just where you were and are. We also scribe everything because the worst thing is to have talked about it and not written it down. Then you're left with, what did we decide? You know, later. So, we facilitate. We scribe. And if you need some technical expertise in manufacturing and distribution, in automation, or any kind of operations in general, we have a huge network and a bench of experts that we can pull in to provide some subject matter expertise to contribute to the conversation as well. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for watching.
