5 ways NetSuite can help Light Manufacturing companies

Posted On March Tuesday 2, 2021

The Renaissance in Europe was a time of awakening. It was a time of new ideas coming to life, and what better way is for them to come to life than on an artist’s board or a poet’s verse? The answer—perhaps a factory?

Yes, indeed the first factory was established in Italy during the Renaissance and was engaged in ship building. And with the dawn of the industrial age, a number of heavy manufacturing factories followed. Much like the first factory out of Italy during the Renaissance Period built ships to please kings and princes, today’s light manufacturing industry focuses on the millennial—the ordinary consumers of today. As someone who has been in the business of light manufacturing, you would be familiar that it is more consumer-oriented than ever today. Everyone’s got a CRM to manage their customer. Everyone’s got an ERP that helps them manage their production lines. When everyone is armed to the teeth, shouldn’t you be? Especially in today’s competitive world? Let us see how NetSuite, the world’s #1 cloud ERP, can help you.

Manage labor costs effectively

Lowering labor costs can be quite crucial in the light manufacturing industry, especially when machines are not playing an important role in the manufacturing process. How much labor should you use, and for the labor that you use, how much should you end up paying? The Project Costing module in NetSuite allows you to calculate labor costs. Not just this, but the Demand Planning module of NetSuite allows you to estimate how much labor would be required to meet the demands of the customers and then you can work out how much they should be paid, keeping in mind the total expenditure you have for the project. You can set budgets for both labor and materials and plan accordingly, so that you do not exceed the limits set in the budget. If you do need to reforecast and change the budget accordingly in NetSuite, even that can be done.

Providing instructions to the Production Team

Full traceability of Assembly Items

An item that is manufactured and consumes other items as part of that process is called an Assembly Item, an example being a car. That is what Henry Ford did with the first car. He created the first assembly item! The idea was so popular that later Aldous Huxley even fantasized a human assembly line in his novel about a dystopian world, Brave New World! But assembly items are not only common in heavy but light manufacturing as well. They can easily be defined through the New Items menu. Defining the Assembly items with lot numbers allows for full traceability. In case of a faulty assembly, because each component of the assembly will have a specific lot number, a backwards trace will enable us to identify the component that is faulty in the assembly and recall it before it ships to the customer. If the item(s) have been shipped, a forward trace can be performed to advise the customer to return the faulty items.

Demand-based inventory replenishment

As a light manufacturer, you are faced with the dilemma sometimes that your business either overstocks or understocks items. You also have to ensure that you have enough stock during certain festival seasons such as Christmas and Easter, when the demand is more. You can also view the historical sales demand, supply to stock time, and average lead time as well. This will help you decide how much of the items you need. In NetSuite, you can dynamically set preferred stock levels and re-order points for the inventory. This will ensure that the inventory is replenished accurately based on the demand from the customer.

Provide a better customer experience with NetSuite CRM+

Finally, at the end of the day, nothing matters as much as the customer’s experience for you, the manufacturer. You must have already realized that when the customer buys from you, he is in effect buying an experience and not just the product itself. To improve this experience for the customer, you must keep track of every interaction with the customer across multiple touchpoints. The CRM, which is also a part of NetSuite, allows you to track customer information to create a profile for each customer. This profile or persona will then allow your marketing team to target these customers more effectively. Marketing campaigns can be set up with a high level of customization available. For instance, an e-mail marketing campaigns can be set up within NetSuite itself, with support for even designing email templates, setting up rules and date for dispatch etc.

Being in the light manufacturing business, and having read about the benefits of NetSuite, you must be looking for direction. Techcloudpro offers 40 hours of free consulting on how NetSuite can help your business. We are happy to hear you out, happy to address your queries. Let’s talk.

Conclusion

As you may have noted, we did not present a cost-based analysis to differentiate between the two ERPs. This is because they both have different pricing models and over a longer period, let’s say two or more years, cost is not really a differentiator.

Also, despite the points we cited in favor of NetSuite (and these are just a few of them), we urge you to impartially consider both ERP solutions for your business before you decide on one. This is because there may be a few other ways that Microsoft Dynamics could be better than NetSuite in managing your specific business needs—the presence of a digital assistant being a key point. There might be a few other points as well in favor of Microsoft Dynamics, so it may be worth checking it out too.

If you need to know more about how Techcloudpro can help you use NetSuite to grow your business, talk to us. We are waiting to hear from you!

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