Manufacturing
Intelligent Solutions for Your Most Vexing Manufacturing Problems
A manufacturing centric ERP solution from people who know manufacturing
For over 40 years, TIW’s in-house development group has leveraged its extensive real-world manufacturing experience and the feedback of clients, large and small, to create ALERE’s manufacturing suite. The resultant product is a flexible, integrated, highly automated ERP system that eschews the inflexible procedures other packages force upon its users.
ALERE drastically lowers data collection friction by providing users with a concise interface to document manufacturing activities and an integrated barcoding system. ALERE’s interface allows users to easily document normally frustrating outlier situations, such as over-issuing raw material, scrapping WIP, changing yields, and the rework of finished goods. The result is an accurate inventory, finished good cost, and significantly better insight into production variances.
ALERE can effectively manage a wide range of manufacturing verticals. The system has served as a foundation for our clients to build and evolve their workflows as they respond to changes in market environments and business strategies. Best of it this can be done without the constriction of working around, re-implementing, or modifying their ERP system.
Scalable with Unparalleled Flexibility
ALERE is the foundation for a wide range of manufacturing companies that utilize a diverse range of production strategies. Whether an organization is make-to-stock, make-to-order, or mixed-mode, ALERE will help better plan, manage, and trace your manufacturing operations.
Among its peers, ALERE is unique in its capability to adapt readily to changes in production strategies. The out-of-the-box ability to document exceptions, changes, and variances allows companies to adjust their manufacturing operations to specific needs without worrying about reimplementation or modification. The dynamic nature of ALERE ultimately enables organizations to offer additional features and services that would be problematic to document in other ERP systems due to their rigid nature.
The ability to document nearly anything and adapt workflows to meet specific goals really shines within organizations with multiple divisions. ALERE enables every division within an organization to operate within the same ALERE installation, even if the divisions utilize dissimilar production strategies. ALERE facilitates inventory transfers between divisions and combined reporting while segregating division-specific workflows. ALERE’s unified ERP environment simplifies training, record-keeping, reporting, and compliance requirements.
Best of all, ALERE scales extraordinarily well with organizational growth. As requirements change and evolve, users can easily add additional ALERE modules to find efficiencies and cover new requirements.
When Traceability is Paramount
ALERE provides sensitive industries with cradle-to-grave traceability for organizational supply chains, inventory, and manufacturing activities.
Multiple studies have shown that most of a user’s day is spent simply looking for something. The search can range from something as simple as a list of unpaid invoices to a task as complicated as tracing a complex finished good’s raw materials back to its suppliers.
ALERE drastically reduces the time required for users to locate relevant information by incorporating a host of powerful, pervasive search functions. The results are then organized and presented to the user without requiring them to move between windows or functions.
ALERE also considers the other side of the data retrieval equation: data collection. ALERE drastically reduces the friction required for users to record activities, such as inventory issuances, movements, transfers, shipments, and receipts. As a result, ALERE’s users have realized significant increases in the accuracy of inventory balances, carrying costs, and general traceability.
Data entry shouldn't be a chore
ALERE’s interface is designed to quickly and accurately guide users through a workflow via the work order or the integrated barcoding system, with minimal time and effort figuring out the intricacies by production staff. At the same time, ALERE provides an off-ramp for recording activities that deviate from ideal circumstances such as:
- Adding additional raw material to work orders.
- Posting byproducts.
- Returning unused material to stock.
- Scraping materials or WIP.
- Changing yields.
- Capturing actual time on work orders.
- Updating in-process work orders using a new BOM revision.
- and more
Lowering the friction between the user and the ERP system avoids poor data collection practices and results in ALERE often being more accurate and timely than its contemporaries, as data does not need to be beaten into shape after the fact. The ultimate result is timely reporting, better scheduling, significantly more precise inventory balances, better costing, and fewer delays in the invoicing process.
Module List
Build your ERP system module by module.
ALERE’s manufacturing modules may be mixed and matched to provide different levels of functionality to manufacturing organizations. As the organization grows and needs evolve, additional modules can be added into existing ALERE environments without a costly effort.
Order Module
ALEREs Order module creates, manages, and maintains the information associated with work order documents that provide critical traceability, costing, compliance, quality, time tracking, and scheduling information.
ALERE’s work order contains several unique features such as editable routes and material lists to ensure all costs, including rework and material variances, can be easily accounted for and a method for individually forward and backward scheduling work orders providing an unprecedented level of manufacturing floor control.
Work orders come with ALERE’s data acquisition system pre-integrated, enabling an easy implementation of barcode-based data collection.
More Information about the Order Module
Cost Module
The Cost module fulfills multiple functions. It monitors work in process (WIP) which can be one of the most difficult aspects of managing inventory valuations, especially for a company that is primarily order driven where a significant portion of its inventory is tied up on the shop floor. It measures actual versus planned costs on an order-by-order basis to help detect and correct problems with manufacturing processes.
Lastly, it performs item cost roll-ups using a BOM, a route, an inventory cost, and fixed and variable overhead methods to find the predicted cost of manufacturing an item. This cost can then be used to automatically set the item's standard cost in inventory by adjusting general ledger entries.
More Information about the Order Module
BOM Module
The BOM (Bills of Material) is the foundation of a manufacturing system. A BOM is a listing of all the subassemblies, parts and raw materials that go into making a parent assembly and shows the quantity of each required to make that assembly. It is used in conjunction with the production schedule to determine the items for which purchase orders and work orders must be released. A variety of BOMs are supported, including the single-level bill of material, the indented bill of material, the modular bill, the variable bill, the phantom bill, and the costed bill.
A BOM may be up to twenty-five levels deep. The parent BOM supports revisions with active/inactive dates as does each component on the bill, which allows components to be smoothly substituted or replaced.
More Information about the BOM Module
Route Module
The Route module is where the various master routes are created and stored. A route details the method of manufacture of a particular item. ALERE will create as many different routes as are required. Routes are one of the three key elements, including material lists (BOM’s) and product configurations that are appended to work orders as they are created.
A master route consists of the route name and associated information, plus a detailed listing of the operation steps to be performed, their sequence, the work centers that will be used, and the standards for setting up and running each step.
More Information about the Route Module
Schedule Module
The function of the Schedule module is to efficiently schedule work orders through a production facility, using finite capacity scheduling (FCS) techniques, to arrive at predicted completion times for each of the orders. It takes each work order, assigns it a priority, looks at the route to build it, reserves time on the work centers it will use, and predicts a date when it is expected be done. With this method there is no need to manage queues as every step on a job has time slots assigned on work centers.
The scheduler supports Synchronous Manufacturing, a method of tying the production schedule to MRP planning. Components on a bill of material can be matched up to the route operation steps on which they are used. When the steps on work orders are scheduled you are, in effect, also scheduling when the material is needed.
More Information about the Schedule Module
Machine Module
In the Order module, work orders tell the manufacturing facility what work needs to be done, while the Machine module enumerates the resources to accomplish it. The Machine module measures, records, and plans the capacity of the manufacturing facility. Manufacturing capacity may be defined as the highest reasonable output rate achievable by the facility’s workforce, equipment, and vendors.
Various factors affect capacity on a day to day basis. These include the number of hours a day each work center is available for work, the training and motivation of the workforce, the number of interruptions expected from machines requiring repair or maintenance, and the dates the facility is closed for holidays, vacations, etc.
More Information about the Machine Module
Plan Module - MRP
Perhaps the most powerful tool in ALERE is the Plan module. The Plan module uses a range of MRP techniques, drawing on the BOM, inventory data, and scheduling data, to generate a range of meaningful inventory requirement outputs in a single pass, completely unlike other systems.
Using a time-phased approach, planning is accomplished by exploding the bill of material, adjusting for inventory quantities on hand or on order, and offsetting the net requirements by the appropriate lead times. Not only are the requirements for materials calculated but the recommended purchase orders and production orders can be automatically generated and released. In addition, because the planning is time-phased, Plan recommends rescheduling open purchase orders and work orders when they are not in phase.
