INCREASING YOUR PROFITS THROUGHOPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
During the last part of the 20th century, companies bought Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to
ensure consistent and accurate financial information, provide a transactional backbone, bring discipline to the business, maintain a
"system of records" and help them to compete in the marketplace.
ERP systems are powerful, complex,and stringent; they are transaction based and employ multiple, sequentialsteps to process company data.
As the functional breadth of these systems has expanded, they have acquired a complexity, which at times,can be overwhelming to companies in the throes of implementation, or who are experiencing rapid and frequent changes in their business.
"Our mission at Bridgelogix is to
work with companies to help them to
achieve operational excellence -
moving them forward, faster, with
innovative solutions that help them
simplify and automate their internal
business processes and eliminate
waste and therefore reduce costs,
within their supply chain."
"By reducing operational costs and automating shop floor, warehousing and distribution operations, Bridgelogix helps companies stay competitive."
The timely flow of materials through your organization is an absolute imperative. Solutions from Bridgelogix focus on warehousing activities (receiving, approval, putaway, returns, subcontract, adjustments, transfers, physical inventory, cycle counting, etc.) and shop floor operations (order and operation reporting, scrap
reporting, time and attendance management) and support lean as well as discrete manufacturing environments.
Our solutions simplify and automate the key material processes in your business, opening up a whole wealth of possibilities for streamlining your logistics and production areas and reducing the time and cost associated with those processes.
Bridge2Barcode fully supports your organization's lean initiatives, as it helps companies eliminate MUDA (Japanese word for waste and defined as any activity that does not add value) in the administrative functions of warehousing, distribution and manufacturing.
In the opinion of many industry analysts, ERP systems are not designed to operate in a "lean" fashion, and going from ERP to Lean is
a "DNA" change. Bridgelogix, with its immense domain knowledge of manufacturing companies,understands the changing trends in manufacturing due to "Lean clock speed".
The Bridgelogix suite of products comes with standard features and optional features in each functional area. Most of these features are configurable by the user without requiring any programming changes.The following pages describe some of the various functional areas in Bridge2Barcode, as well as extended functionality available within not only
Bridge2Barcode, but also in the other complementary Bridgelogix products.
PURCHASE RECEIVING
Purchase Order Receipt
For the effective management of all inbound materials, we provide a highly configurable solution that provides
standard features such as:
• Automatic creation of multiple lot numbers and the ability to perform "cascade" receipts (single receipt for multiple purchase order lines).
• Ability to generate a "Receiver" document by purchase order line.
• The ability to create and split a single receipt into multiple lots in case of lot by unit or receiving drums or pallet where each drum or pallet is a lot in Infor ERP in place of receiving each drum or pallet separately.
• Automatically report a subcontract operation (on the related Production Order) as part of receiving items back from the subcontractor with ability to record reject quantities.
• Also for subcontract activities, we can automatically report the production order complete for the quantity received with ability to report rejected quantities, where the subcontract operation is the last operation on the production order.
• Tolerance checks on both quantities and dates to ensure materials are accepted only when required.
• Ability to generate inbound using standard Infor ERPLN inbound rules.
• Ability to release inbound, as well.
• Support for receipts against purchase schedules, as well as receiving against an Advance Shipping Notice (ASN).
Label Printing
• User configurable label printing to track the subsequent movement of materials through the internal process — where vendors are not able to provide bar code labels when they deliver materials.
• Reprint purchase receiving label; reprint production receipt label; reprint cross docking label.
Cross Docking of Receipts to Requirements
• Maintain the outbound and optionally release it — based on the cross docking parameter set up for all types of requirements at the time of either receiving material, putaway, approvals, production reporting, return material from customers or production or service — and print move ticket indicating where the goods need to be delivered.
WAREHOUSING
Following on from the initial purchase receipt, we have developed a set of
solutions that manage the following activities:
• Users can dynamically display the outbound data to pick, move material to hold location if inventory is not present (for later review), and optionally, release outbound as each line is picked. Supports multiple order types and picking can be order based or consolidated.
Allocate/Release Material
• Here, the user can bypass the outbound process that drives the stage material transaction, and issue material directly against multiple order types.
Inventory Adjustments
• Separate user interfaces for writeon and write-off to avoid requirement of input of negative quantities for write-off. Also ability to record limited text.
Inventory Transfer
•Ability to transfer material between warehouses, as well as between locations within a warehouse.
Cycle Counting
•Display list of items/locations to be counted on the scanner. Enhanced to store processed cycle count data into historical table and variance analysis reporting.
Physical Inventory
•Ability to count by location by scanning relevant information instead of processing via a list of items in the cycle count order. This allows the user to add lines to a cycle count order for items found in the bin, but not present in the ERP system.
•With tag control, allows user to pre-print tags with bar codes, input data by tag number and full tag control capabilities such as
assigning tags, voiding tags, etc. Item/Location Inventory
Item/Location Inventory
Inquiry
•Display inventory by item, item and warehouse, as well as inquire on stock by location.
Shipping/Packing
•Our efficient shipping transaction provides a single session capable of releasing the outbound, printing the packing slip and generating and printing the bill of lading.
SHOP FLOOR CONTROL
Report Production Operation Completion
For managing a discrete order based manufacturing environment, we have developed the following set of automated solutions:
•The ability to record the completion of an operation on a scheduled routing. This solution includes the option of tolerance
checks on the quantity reported, as well as options for backflushing material and hours associated with that operation.
• The ability to report completions by shift.
• Standard inquiry to show production order history.
• The ability to record reject quantities with reason codes.
• An option to automatically report the production order as being completed if the last operation is completed (rather than complete the order in a separate, second transaction).
Time/Labor Reporting
In an area often referred to as "Hours Accounting", our solutions provide the ability to capture
actual/elapsed times reported (by individuals or teams) against production orders and post these against the order and onwards to the Financials, replacing the need to use the Hours & Expenses functionality in the People area of the ERP system.
SERVICE
RMA & Depot Repair
The Infor ERPLN Service Management capabilities provide for field service, as well as RMA/Depot repair operations.
Bridgelogix transactions support all of the required functionality for managing the internal RMA process, including:
• The ability to report material consumed in the RMA process against a service work order.
• The ability to report task and order completions throughout the RMA lifecycle.
• The ability to report labor time spent on the repair process and charge that time to the service work order.
THE SOLUTIONS EDGE
What people are saying....
"Bridgelogix can be key to balancing the simplicity of Lean with the complexity of
data acquisition for business and regulatory compliance."
—AMR May 2004
Wherever companies need toimplement solutions for supporting time & attendance, warehouse
management, shop floor control (discrete and repetitive) and service,to extend the core functionality of their existing ERP application and support mobile workers, Bridgelogix has delivered solutions.
In addition to the key transaction processes already mentioned in this document, we have developed a catalog of solutions that covers additional areas such as:
•Handling material over-issues or material returns from production.
•Material substitution on production orders.
•Maintain approvals on incoming goods.
•Kanban requisitioning to support replenishment from internal and external supply
sources.
Wherever you need to simplify the process, automate transactions and eliminate
waste — Bridgelogix has solutions that will give you the edge.
THE TECHNOLOGY EDGE
Developed using Java™ technology, our solutions architecture is unique in that it makes full use of, and is 100% compliant with, the Infor Open Architecture and also because it does not alter the underlying Infor ERPLN business logic.
Running ideally on a dedicated Automated Data Capture (ADC) server, with typically
nothing more than a high-end PC specification, the solution is scalable from several, to several hundred devices and has an extensive set of transaction analytics to support its effective management.
