Recognizing the need to align with long-term goals and optimize their operations, Amazon made a strategic shift by adopting ERP software in 2008. This transition marked a pivotal move for the company as it extended the software suite’s implementation across multifaceted departments, including financials, purchasing, receiving/inventory control, HR, and order management. This exemplifies the transformative power of ERP solutions in empowering supply chain businesses, where integrating various functions under a unified system enhances efficiency, real-time insights, and coordination across the entire value chain. Amazon’s adoption of ERP reflects a strategic choice to harness technology to drive operational excellence, streamline processes, and elevate its competitiveness in the dynamic realm of supply chain management.

Amazon’s adoption of ERP is an illuminating example for other supply chain businesses. This move showcased the transformative power of streamlining operations through integrated software solutions. Amazon enhanced visibility, agility, and control across its supply chain by centralizing data and processes. This success story underscores the potential benefits for other businesses facing challenges in demand planning, inventory management, production scheduling, and customer service. Here is where NetSuite swoops in and saves the day!

NetSuite Supply Chain Management:

NetSuite’s Supply Chain Management empowers businesses to seamlessly manage the entire journey of goods, from suppliers to customers. NetSuite ERP ensures precision in purchasing by maintaining smooth production operations through efficient material availability and scheduling and facilitating accurate communication with suppliers during procurement. This comprehensive solution also integrates demand planning, inventory management, and predictive analytics to optimize production strategies. With streamlined work orders, routing, and execution of supply plans, NetSuite ERP guarantees the timely delivery of products, making supply chain management a strategic advantage.

Incorporating a unified system

NetSuite’s supply chain management captures and instantly updates crucial information such as production data, financial reports, inventory levels, and pending orders. This synchronization guarantees seamless alignment between procurement, planning, and production systems, all operating on consistent and current data.

Advantages of NetSuite Supply Chain Management:

• Enhanced Profitability: Mitigate expenses linked to strategizing and implementing supply chain operations.
• Optimized Cash Flow: Gain insights into the timing of material and product requirements, enabling efficient production planning and reducing excess inventory.
• Risk Reduction: Harness predictive analytics to pre-empt potential risks, paired with scenario analysis for informed decision-making.

Features of NetSuite Supply Chain:

Grasp your demand, effectively distribute resources, and manage production schedules to guarantee the availability of products for timely sales fulfillment.

Supply Planning:

NetSuite’s supply chain planning empowers businesses to harmonize supply and demand by optimizing cost management, lead times, and service standards. Leveraging inventory management, demand forecasting methods, a resilient scheduling mechanism, and predictive analytics, NetSuite’s supply chain planning equips enterprises with informed choices, ensuring product accessibility while minimizing surplus inventory. It comes with various tools:

1. Supply Chain Control Tower

Empower your logistics teams with the Supply Chain Control Tower, a dynamic tool that models inventory supply and demand across your supply chain. This tool aids in capacity analysis and strategic inventory planning, offering accurate forecasts through simulations for various inventory and assembly items, including those with unique identifiers like lot and serial numbers. Monitor inventory balance in real-time, considering sales orders and future stock levels, and visualize the effects of adjustments to your bill of materials (BOM) or production procedures. Leverage predictive risk assessment to anticipate the repercussions of decisions on upcoming business processes.

2. Demand Planning:

Forecast future inventory requirements by analyzing historical demand, seasonal patterns, sales forecasts, and open opportunities with NetSuite Demand Planning. This feature empowers companies to assess anticipated orders and present this data in various formats. The intuitive menu guides users through calculating demand, reviewing and adjusting demand plans, generating supply plans, and creating purchase, transfer, and work orders. Multi-location inventory management offers real-time visibility across different inventory sites, allowing hierarchical organization and automated transfer order creation between locations. Efficiently set item parameters such as availability for demand planning, alternate sources for new items, and distribution network categorization. Handle allocation exceptions adeptly, promptly fulfilling high-priority orders with intelligent supply reallocation recommendations. Streamline the entire process from planning to execution and achieve optimal inventory management.

3. Supply Planning

Achieve optimal fulfillment of demand plan requirements by effectively managing supply and demand to meet customer orders as committed. Utilizing reorder points, NetSuite ERP triggers to purchase, work, or transfer orders when inventory falls below a predefined minimum level, factoring in historical data, safety stock, and supplier lead times for automatic reorder point calculation. With NetSuite’s timed-phased planning, companies can align demand calculations with supplier delivery cycles, ensuring efficient order and delivery synchronization. The material requirements planning (MRP) feature assists businesses in comprehending inventory needs while maintaining a balance between supply and demand. This empowers companies to efficiently handle inventory, schedule production, and deliver products punctually and cost-effectively.

4. Capacity Planning

Efficiently manage production capacity with NetSuite’s capacity planning tools. Utilize rough cut capacity planning (RCP) to assess the alignment of production demand with available resources, presenting work center utilization percentages over a defined planning duration. RCP further compiles data to reveal remaining capacity, labor, and equipment resource requirements for work centers. These plans are based on NetSuite data at a specific point and can be adjusted to model scenarios illustrating the impact of supply, demand, or both changes.

5. Production, Planning and Scheduling:

Streamline your operations with precise production planning and scheduling. Develop comprehensive item routes, determine start and end dates, and assess available capacity for task fulfillment. Through production scheduling, efficiently manage and optimize manufacturing workloads within defined timeframes. This process assigns machine resources to work orders systematically, following a first-in, first-out (FIFO) sequence established by the planner.

Supply Chain Execution:

NetSuite’s supply chain execution facilitates the implementation of supply chain plans, orchestrating a seamless production process considering inventory, procurement, and resource availability. This intricate task is simplified with NetSuite, ensuring all components work harmoniously. As a result, production can move smoothly, and employees can redirect their efforts from detailed planning to more productive activities.

1. Work Order Management:

Streamline your production control with NetSuite’s Work Order Management. Create, release, and manage work orders effortlessly, with automated scheduling for efficiency. For discrete manufacturers, NetSuite offers flexibility in managing production processes, regardless of size or complexity. It supports various options, from work orders to backflushing materials upon completion. Batch processing capabilities provide end-to-end traceability for every batch, with detailed tracking of machines, employees, work centers, and assets. NetSuite’s manufacturing execution systems and barcode interfaces ensure real-time data updates. Shop Floor Controls help prioritize, track, and report on production orders and schedules, with instant feedback to workstations. Transfer Order Management simplifies inventory movement between multiple locations, making preparation for assembly a breeze, and seamlessly integrates with external warehouse management systems for efficient inventory management.

2. Quality Management:

Streamline quality control with NetSuite’s automated processes. Establish and enforce standards, practices, and policies to ensure top-tier product quality with minimal effort. NetSuite offers predefined inspection profiles with specific criteria, inspector qualifications, and inspection methods. These profiles uphold strict standards, capturing measurements and comparing data against predefined pass/fail evaluation limits. Inspections can be linked to items or processes, allowing on-demand or scheduled testing during receiving or manufacturing. In case of failures, items can be designated for further assessment. Utilizing NetSuite’s tablet interface, engineers can conveniently collect and analyze test data on the shop floor or at the receiving dock, enabling real-time feedback and immediate access to results.

3. Manufacturing Execution System

Streamline data accuracy and reduce manual tasks using the scanner and tablet app with real-time production data recording. NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing features a built-in barcoding application that simplifies labor tracking, work order completions, material movements, and more, ensuring precise transactions. The HMI Tablet also offers an interactive work queue, perfect for rugged manufacturing environments, allowing users to record real-time progress and efficiently manage operations. This solution enhances production control for supervisors overseeing multiple orders or individuals in real-time mode.

4. Warranty, Repair, and Returns

NetSuite Case Management extends customer experience by incorporating returns, repairs, and warranty-related claims, fostering customer loyalty and repeat business. Seamlessly integrated into NetSuite CRM, this feature empowers manufacturers and distributors to provide efficient front-line support. Cases can be initiated through customizable online forms or dedicated support emails, enabling timely responses driven by a user-configurable knowledge base. Warranty profiles can be easily defined and applied with automatic or manual warranty registrations, while repair processes are aligned with case management and work orders. NetSuite’s comprehensive solution streamlines returns, exchanges, and warranty concerns across all channels, elevating customer satisfaction.

5. Product Data Management:

Integrate your ERP system to streamline product development and enhance efficiency. NetSuite offers comprehensive features for seamless engineering information access throughout the organization. Creating and managing BOMs with assembly items becomes effortless, ensuring consistency and accurate multilevel structure management. Advanced BOM options allow for tailored control, including location-specific or brand-linked BOMs. NetSuite’s unique item management approach simplifies data entry by presenting item-specific screens, while location management enables adaptable manufacturing and stocking strategies. Automated processes efficiently capture, document, and implement engineering change orders. Routings define production details and cost templates and even generate finite capacity schedules. NetSuite’s central document management repository ensures easy file uploading, attachment, and sharing across the business.

6. Outsourced Manufacturing:

NetSuite’s outsourced manufacturing feature assists in overseeing subcontracted production through vendor partnerships. It automates the procurement of outsourced assembly components, tracks their intake, and manages their transfer to designated locations post-production. This streamlines procurement and production transactions within the NetSuite system.

NetSuite Supply Chain Management addresses various challenges:

• Avoiding Stock Outs: Enhance product availability and sales through precise future demand planning.
• Mitigating Production Delays: Account for lead times and preassemblies to ensure timely material arrivals and seamless production flow.
• Ensuring Consistent Quality: Maintain standards by inspecting incoming raw materials and conducting routine production reviews.

NetSuite Supply Chain Cost

The NetSuite cost of Supply Chain Management varies based on company size, with start-ups and growing businesses adopting the platform. Users subscribe to an annual license fee comprising the core platform, optional modules, and user count. Additionally, an initial setup implementation fee applies. As your business expands, you can seamlessly activate new modules and incorporate more users due to the flexibility of cloud-based software. The supply chain management solutions are accessible through different modules. In the dynamic landscape of modern business, partnering with NetSuite opens doors to a world of comprehensive solutions and expert guidance. With a NetSuite partner, you’ll confidently navigate the complexities of technology integration, process optimization, and business growth, ensuring your journey toward success is streamlined and strategic.