My first month (plus a bit) update

I wanted to update you on how the new position with Aptiv was going after my first month, but it has been crazy hectic, so here is my first month (plus a bit) update.

To start, I am intentionally never using the term “job” to describe managing the production program at Aptiv. Job is the term I now reserve for work without any personal reward and being part of the production team at Aptiv defines the opposite of a “job.” Over the past month, I have learned what makes this program so unique. It’s the people I have the pleasure of working with every day and the reward that comes from knowing I’m helping everyone in the program grow (myself, very much included).

Of course, no new work environment would be complete without its share of challenges (or, as I’ve learned to think of them, “opportunities to innovate”). While this program is still in its infancy, the need for material resource planning/tracking was already very apparent. There was no formal (or informal) inventory management in place. If you needed to know if we had sufficient materials on-hand to quote a project, you simply spent the afternoon scouring the department with a sticky note counting and noting quantities as you found a box here, a half-full tote there (you get the picture). Then you went over to the production whiteboard to see what projects we’re currently “in progress” (making sure to add those to your sticky note). Next, you went and found someone who could tell you how long the “in progress” projects were going to take to complete (adding that next to each project on your sticky note). Finally, you go back to your office, spend thirty to forty minutes deciphering the scribble on your sticky note, create a quick spreadsheet, guesstimate how long this new project should take (without any insight to what other project may already be in the production pipeline), send the client a proposal and estimated completion date and… pray.

So, I spent the next week analyzing our needs and trying to pair them with a solution that would not take months to implement, months to configure for our somewhat unique production environment, and months to train the staff. If I tallied up all those months, I was realistically looking at a four-to-six-month timeline, and I needed a solution in four to six weeks (more praying).

Enter MRPeasy

Fortune (and a lot of praying) was guiding my hand when I found a software solution that defied the laws of nature. First off, Material Resource Planning and “Easy” don’t belong in the same paragraph, let alone used as one word (it’s like cats and dogs living together) but the more I studied the feature set and how straightforward the setup appeared, the more I thought I might have found something special here, the proverbial Unicorn of MRP systems.

Over the next four weeks, I tested every facet of the production cycle from creating a customer (MRPeasy has a build-in CRM), building a quote including checking on-hand inventory, estimating lead times for materials that must be ordered, and factoring in production schedules and resource availability. Converting the quote into an order and automatically generating the needed manufacturing and purchase orders for items that must be produced or procured—tracking production schedules against estimates and monitoring labor costs—and finally, shipping and invoicing the finished order (MRPeasy also includes an accounting module).

Did I mention that after the first two weeks of testing I was so impressed with the results I was seeing, I deleted the test data which is pre-loaded to the free trial account, and started entering our live inventory and customers and using our “real-world” production processes?

It’s been about six weeks since I started at Aptiv. I’m pleased to say we have inventory management in place, production scheduling (both forward and backward), and the ability to process our own invoicing and payments. I am currently handling all the interactions with the system and providing paper copies of customer, manufacturing, and purchase orders to my team. Training for them starts next week, and as they become comfortable with the system, the paper copies will go away. I expect in two weeks, we will be paper-free and the only interaction I will need to have with the system will be creating customer orders (as I am the primary point of contact for our clients) and building out new production routings and bills of materials when we take on a new product.

So, am I happy with MRPeasy? In a word, yes. It offers every functional area you would expect; CRM, procurement, inventory management, production planning, and accounting, and it presents it in a manner that is well integrated and flows naturally. It is also well documented and supported with a well-produced knowledge videos library covering every functional area.

June will be our first month running 100% on the new MRP system (no spreadsheets, no production whiteboard, no handwritten packing slips, no sticky notes, and no combing the warehouse to count on-hand inventory. 

I’ll report back after training is complete to share lessons learned and what’s next.