How can you integrate ERP with production schedules?

An ERP system is capable of integrating all the aspects of the business such as inventory management, procurement, production and sales into a single database. This integration opens doors for real time visibility and data sharing across departments which enables effective planning and scheduling.

The visibility in real time on production systems helps to take better decisions, but in real situations the live production systems integrated, are easy to affect with wrong data, and its hard to solve if system is live or even you need to execute a simulated back operation, my proposal is integrate the productions system by two ways, first using separate modules, different than the calculation module, or in different softwares and using connectors with specific time jobs to connect depending on the costumer needs.

From my experience, the utilization of ERP integrated system, helps with the internal communication, because all departments have access to same information and are looking the same result in same metric, for example if using a different systems the information will be biased, what makes disconnection and different goals between departments, at same time exist the hybrid systems, some of the use the original calculation stored and calculated, and the output connects with another systems that using different metrics or even provide processed output, but all the information comes from the same calculation, so at the end everybody are looking the same, just from the specific point of needed.

Under my responsibility of ERP Task Manager, one of the hardest challenges that face it is the data quality, this is why we try to decrease the human interaction, but in production systems, the quality issues are not belongs from humanity input only, as i proposed in my master final project, we have now so many tools to clean data, like using Clustering algorithms for detects multidimensional outliers, because the production systems even the most simple create multidimensional data in a single result, so using clustering algorithm helps to find not just a data quality issue, even when the tool to metric are wrong and let to find patterns that is invisible for humans, so this is a very powerful tool to find data quality issues.

On my experience the softwares using on production, are not so many friendly and older with the executor, which means, some of the them can be easy to integrate, my suggestion is the production system will be deployed internally following the ERP needs, cause i know many enterprises that buy the production systems from a third party, and this have so many variables in working operation but ERP only need 2 or 3 variables, and the rest are forgettable cause nobody can use it, in my experience as well is using connectors, but as i mention earlier i prefer as well the API integration, cause the production system are not mounted in same interface so, can easily retrieve when have error or something like that.

In master degree, a teacher let the following idea, "the people always find the easiest way to make anything, but easier way means all the already know it, even if the new process/system are easier from technique perspective, cause in the old mode only need to repeat what he knows", from my experience we need to involve all the actors in a representative way, and try to test the system with this team, cause this is an easy way to know their feelings and thinks, so by this way are more capable to match the desire of work requirements and executor desire, and the same time helps to involve all the team, cause the deployers team will be never the expert on any kind of this matters, so the involve of the team will help a lot.

Like a close of this article, the usage of production systems linked to a ERP is a needed from industry 4.0, and when this happening we will start to facing some of the challenges listed on below points, and even more, but with more information comes more analysis and we will get more, for now we don't have the hardware capability to analyze all this data with a cheap cost and energy saving, i think in the future with the advance of hardware we will moving for the industry 5.0 and then i hope all production systems will be lived linked with the ERP of enterprises, my final suggestion is the ERP doesn't only need to liked with production systems, they need to link with all system used in enterprise to have a collaborative supply chain.