What Impact Does ERP Have On Operational Efficiency in Paint Manufacturing?

Imagine a paint manufacturing organization which is on the brink of getting a big order. The order is big enough to fulfil its half yearly selling targets! Plus, if it fulfils the commitment, it will get additional order for next year, equals to the targets of the whole year!

?This is an opportunity which can transform the organization and uplift it in the next orbit, hence no organization would want to let it go. But the management is in doubts!

It has its own apprehensions regarding handling and delivering such a big order. It knows that there are many operational areas which need rectifications, and without those improvements delivering the order in time will be difficult.

Some key operational challenges they need to tackle are uninterrupted supply of raw materials, managing cash to order cycle, real-time inventory visibility and updates, manual interference in many processes, etc.

Now the company has two choices. Either to lose the strands of the opportunity or to grab it, make necessary changes as soon as possible and give it a chance. If it could bring the things on track, great; else, get ready to dent image of the organization and ruin its future possibilities of getting an order of this size.

What will the management choose?? Let’s not strain our minds in thinking about this and leave the decision on the management of the organization, but if you are also a paint manufacturing organization, there is a learning for you. Get ready for the future. Take an action before the opportunity becomes a curse for you. ?

Invest in a technical solution. Typically, a paint ERP solution which can eradicate various operational lacunas and bring out confidence to seize the opportunity.

Such a solution not only has capability to structure and digitize your operations, but also automates various processes along with holding the compliance norms tight.

In the subsequent section, we will discuss how a paint ERP can improve operational efficiency.

Paint ERP: How does it improve the operational efficiency of manufacturers??

There is no simple answer to it. To look at the operational efficiency holistically, we need to look at various processes of paint manufacturing organization and understand their operational issues. Then we can discuss the role of ERP in making those processes smoother to improve efficiency.

R&D and Formulation-

Today’s paint market is quite dynamic. Manufacturers must bring new innovative products as per the consumer’s demands that meet environmental guidelines too. ERP for Paint plays a crucial role in creating new paints.?

It supports formulation of new colours, ensuring the right balance of pigment, chemicals, VOC and additives, their testing, and modification to get consistent and regulatory compliant colours.

With the help of ERP, organization can create a base formula which can be worked upon to bring new variations quickly in the market.?

Procurement-

Production starts with procurement. Quality of raw materials largely decides quality of final products. Asking for quotations, managing lists of vendors, considering lead times, cracking a profitable deal with vendors, etc. take a huge toll of human efforts, time and the process becomes error prone because it requires recurrent filling of data.

With ERP for paint industry, procurement becomes a smooth task. Store, manage and retrieve vendor details along with their various attributes like lead time, quality rating etc. at simple clicks. Paint ERP like BatchMaster ERP for paint can suggest best vendor among the pool of vendors by considering various aspects like lead time, rates, quality rating, discounts and more.

This saves a lot of time of comparing various vendors and selecting the best one for procurement, making the process easier and efficient.

Sales-

In the dynamic world of business, consumers have lot of touch points, like ecommerce store, offline stores, online stores etc. Keeping a track of each touch point manually and consolidating them is a big pain and effort-involving task.

Paint ERP makes it easier. It digitizes process of prospect making, converts the same prospect into client and makes quotations into sales order just by clicking. It automatically calculates taxes and apply discounts.?

This removes the need of repeatedly filling up vital details of the client and saves huge time and reduces chances of errors.

Inventory Management-

Tracking how much inventory is available, how much is in transit, how much is ready to sell and how much is in the form of raw materials all at the same time is overwhelming task for inventory manager. But when equipped with a paint ERP, the details are at his/her figure tips, giving leverage of time to invest in more productive work.?

In paint industry, where inventory items have shelf life /expiry life, an ERP removes the intricate manual process of tracking those details. The software automatically moves material in FEFO (First Expired First Out) or FIFO (First In First Out) fashion. This saves huge time and enhances efficiency of overall organization, besides saving wastage.

Costing-

Deriving a cost which is profitable for organization yet within the budget of consumers is a tedious task and involves a lot of calculations. There are various factors that affect the cost of a product. Manual calculation is time consuming task. Moreover, considering various costs like electricity cost, labour cost, taxes, wastage costs precisely is not possible manually.

With paint ERP in place, the process becomes automatic and fast. The software calculates all the necessary costs, does the required calculations and comes up with a cost that yields desired results. Additionally, it supports what-if analysis, that allows to see the impact of various factors and alternatives on the final cost.

With the help of an ERP software for paint, manufacturers can easily set markup or margins, and identify its impact on various other factors.?

An ERP for paint also easily manages co-product or by-product, helping the organization to find out costing of those products without hassle.

Finance-

Accounting and financials are major stakeholders in working of an organization. Miscalculation or errors in digits can adversely impact growth of the organization. Besides, calculation of taxes, bank reconciliation, management of payments and receivables etc. take a huge toll of mental space, physical labour, and time. ?

With the help of a paint ERP, these torrents of complexities come to a halt. An ERP software like BatchMaster ERP for paint, helps to punch every entry, does real time bank reconciliation, calculates taxes, and manages payments and receivables effectively to lessen down the burdens on accounts personnels.

Even during the month ends and year ends also, the accounts people don’t have to invest much of their time in calculation and data corrections as everything in clean and regulated format can appear before them in simple clicks. This ease makes the whole financial processes easy and smooth, enhancing efficiency of accounts personnels in the organization.

The error-free and fast accounting helps to get real time and exact status of company’s financial health, making the management more equipped to take critical decisions fast.

Production-

Producing the right product at the right time, in right quantity is key to success in the business world. Recording consumers’ demands, producing the product accordingly and predicting the changing trends require a smooth and errorfree integration of various processes. Even a minute glitch in the chain can ruin the image of the organization.

At the same time, organization must ensure that there is no production halt.

EPR software comes to rescue at such a point. It enables batch processing in an efficient way so that production is uninterrupted. MPS and MRP capabilities of the software enables organization to procure and produce exact number of materials as required. This helps in zeroing the wastage and optimizing overall resources in an efficient way.

Reports generation-

A paint manufacturing organization, like any other organizations, can have different systems at work. It can deploy financial system, production system, an inventory management software, a separate system for R&D, and so forth. ?Often these systems are isolated and don’t communicate with each other. Hence, extracting a consolidated report is not possible.

Reports from individual systems can be drawn, and then could be consolidated which is a time consuming, resource exhaustive and error-prone process.

With the help of an ERP for Paint, all the departments can have a unified flow of data. Since the data is unified, consolidating them becomes a cakewalk! Within few clicks, reports can be generated. At one side, this ease of report generation liberates resources from exhaustive tasks and lessen the chances of errors; at the same time, on the other hand, it enables management to take faster decisions.

Conclusion:

Any industry, and particularly paint industry, has many intricate operational challenges, some of which we discussed above. It is clear from the above discussion that a paint ERP can ease out the operational challenges and boost efficiency.

Not only the software can save time and money, but it can also cut down various laborious and complex tasks to convert them into simple pieces of cake.

But not all paint ERPs are the same. The ones which have good amount of experience in the industry, can handle intricate nuances of the sector and offer easy to use interface. Not only this, but the software must also have a dependable and reliable customer support to combat any exigency.

One such ERP software for paint is BatchMaster ERP for paint. Over the past 40 years, the software has successfully carved a niche for itself in process manufacturing space.? ?

Pioneering formulation, the software has earned great respect across the world which is a testimony of the prudence of the product.

If you are a paint manufacturer looking for an industry specific and reliable ERP software, BatchMaster ERP for paint is the one go to solution.

Please visit BatchMaster or mail us at [email protected] for details.