UPDATE:
Since Sage announced that Sage 200 Manufacturing was being retired in November 2020, we have written a new article about it’s replacement, the Sicon Manufacturing Suite. You can read the article here
What Is Sage 200 Manufacturing?
Sage 200 Manufacturing (Sage 200cloud Manufacturing) is a Sage module that allows businesses to manufacture their goods more efficiently, increasing productivity and reducing costs. It increases visibility across all parts of the manufacturing process, including materials, supply chain, production and operations. This increased visibility means businesses can keep production to schedule and failing parts of the processes identified and rectified.
How does Sage 200 Manufacturing work?
The Sage 200 Manufacturing module consists of a series of sub-modules designed for specific parts of the manufacturing process. These modules are;
- Bill Of Materials (BOM).
- Material Requirement Planning (MRP).
- Shop Floor Data Collection (SFDC).
- Works Order Processing (WOP).
- Master Production Scheduling (MPS).
- Estimating.
- Work In Progress (WIP).
- Graphical Planning Tool.
What is Bill of Materials(BOM)?
Bill of Materials is used to keep track of the materials and their cost needed in the manufacturing process. You can specify which items are required in order to build another unit, and once a unit is built, the module can update inventory levels to reflect this.
It also features version control to keep track of any amendments. For some manufacturing businesses, Bill of Materials could be sufficient for their needs and they could take the module without taking the entire Manufacturing module.
What is Material Requirement Planning (MRP)?
Material Requirement Planning ensures a low inventory of components doesn’t hold up production. It assesses the current demand in MPS, assesses inventory levels and then makes recommendations based on a wide variety of factors. It will consider things like supplier lead time, minimum orders quantities and already on order quantities. MRP allows manufacturers to keep their inventory lean but not dangerously so.
Within MRP, you can also raise purchase orders and work orders, increasing the speed at which businesses can order components. MRP is a crucial part of the module as it ensures the manufacturing process doesn’t become stalled due to a lack of materials.
What is Shop Floor Data Collection (SFDC)?
Shop Floor Data Collection tracks how various extended operations within the manufacturing process take. This information provides accurate quotes and timings and helps businesses identify parts of the manufacturing process that slow down the production rate.
What is Works Order Processing (WOP)?
Works Order Processing tracks jobs as they move through production. It allocates stock and can produce picklists of components required for a particular job. It can also track batch and serial numbers, providing an accurate view of the production journey.
What is Master Production Scheduling (MPS)?
Master Production Scheduling reads the current demand and creates a production schedule. It considers outstanding items from sales orders, items unfulfilled in sales forecasts and items required to fulfil estimates. MPS also considers any bought-in components when creating a schedule of work.
What is Estimating?
Estimating is used to create customer quotes. The module factors in the components’ cost and retrieves information from the labour, machine and operations ledgers. These are where the additional costs of the manufacturing process live. Estimates can be created for one-off batches and non-repetitive batches. If the production is a repetitive batch, then Bill of Materials is used to provide estimates.
The estimating module allows manufacturers to quickly create quotes for their customers, which can be turned into committed, hard orders. Because Sage 200 is cloud-based, sales teams can quickly create quotes whilst on-site with their customers.
What is Work In Progress (WIP)?
Work In Progress monitors the cost of a project from start to finish. You can gain visibility of how much a project has cost at any point during its duration. It also means the project cost can be posted in the same financial period as the projected revenue. This allows manufacturers to gain an accurate view of their profitability.
What is the Sage 200 Manufacturing Graphical Planning Tool?
Graphical Planning Tool allows you to run resource plans for all your manufacturing demands. Data is exported from MRP into Graphical Planner, where it’s modified and reimported back into MRP. An excellent example of the type of modification you might make could be adding overtime or additional manufacturing shifts to keep up with increased demand.
Top 10 Benefits of Sage 200 Manufacturing?
- Increased manufacturing efficiency.
- A better end to end tracking and visibility.
- Reductions in cost as processes are streamlined.
- Better shop floor management as resources are better planned.
- Increased productivities as processes are refined.
- Reduction in delivery lead time to the customer.
- Improved customer relationship due to improved service levels.
- Strict monitoring means issues are identified and resolved quickly.
- Greater control over each step of the manufacturing process.
- Improvements in the quality of the end product.
The manufacturing industry faces a host of challenges that other businesses don’t have. With their manufacturing module, Sage has given manufacturers an arsenal of tools to navigate these challenges better. These allow them better to refine their production processes, schedule production smarter and improve efficiency and lead times.
If your manufacturing business shows signs of fatigue due to inadequacies within your software, it might be time to consider Sage 200 Manufacturing. As Sage Partners, we can help you decide if Sage 200 is right for you. We can help you build a solution, deploy it and provide ongoing support as you grow your business with Sage.
If you would like to speak to one of our Sage 200 Manufacturing experts, feel free to request a free call back here.
