Verzi of PRONTO ERP Raves about Airey of Mississauga-Based OTIWritten by Tom Verzi
OTI, Optimization Technology Inc., located in Mississauga Canada, has been developing and implementing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems since 1984. The Canadian VARs (Value Added Reseller) customer base appreciates features built into their legacy systems which focused on individual manufacturing and distribution requirements. With advent of GUI (Graphical User Interface) it became too difficult to add some of new productivity features OTI and their clients wanted.According to Dave Airey, VP of Sales and Marketing at OTI, “We started looking for a way to move our application to a GUI “look and feel,” but after two years of investigation it became obvious that it was not a practical goal. As an alternative we investigated upgrading our legacy application to a new product.” OTI’s requirements for a new system revolved around their customers. After many years of custom changes, legacy system was geared to client requirements. Airey noted, “OTI’s initial search took us to major ERP players, but none had features we required to support our loyal customers.” Finding an ERP System with Strong Functionality: The search for a new ERP system ended when OTI was introduced to PRONTO North America (www.PRONTOerp.com). According to Airey, “We were introduced to Pronto and were immediately impressed with rich functionality. One important feature was that Pronto is fully integrated. We had engineered our legacy system to be fully integrated so this was of major importance.” The Rationale for PRONTO ERP: - Fully integrated - User definable options to tune systems functionality - A support system to back up our customers - Functionality - GUI look and feel built using a 4 GL tool - Equipment rentals and tracking - Service maintenance - Both Manufacturing and Distribution in one package - Email & Fax capability - Multiple SQL platforms including MS SQL
| | E-Kanban: Blanket Purchase OrdersWritten by Sam Bayer
Blanket Purchase Orders are a “best practice” in well-oiled kanban process. They minimize flow of information between buyers and their suppliers, while maintaining terms, conditions and integrity of business relationship between two parties. Datacraft Solutions (www.datacraftsolutions.com), leader in e-kanban, found that while managing a large number of suppliers with many part numbers, managing integrity of blanket purchase orders become an issue. For every given kanban release it is important to make sure that: an open purchase order still exists, and that there was enough remaining balance on purchase order to cover current purchase. The new Best Practice was “integrating electronic kanban system” with a manufacturers current purchasing system. Kanbans are now guaranteed never to be sent to supplier unless there is a valid blanket purchase order.Fax Kanban is not Efficient and not Lean At ten minutes per fax, someone is spending 3.5 hours per day in administration time. That inefficiency results in less time to utilize more suppliers or improve relationships with existing suppliers.
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