production management | Schulz Consulting

Watch: Sage Production Management Automation by ScanForce, with Sage’s Timothy Harfield

February 10, 2020 by Darcy Boerio

ScanForce recently made big news in the Sage 100cloud world when they hosted a webinar to introduce their new set of tools to automate Sage Production Management.

Since Sage Production Management is new to many in the Sage 100cloud community, having only been released in 2019, Timothy Harfield, head of Product Marketing for Sage 100cloud, made a guest appearance. He gave an overview of how Production Management gives manufacturers visibility into the entire production process and lets them increase agility by tracking costs in real-time.

A “Tremendous Accomplishment”

Harfield also commended ScanForce on their achievements in rapidly developing integrations to Production Management, including compatibility of DSD/ScanForce Multi-Bin, which he referred to as a “tremendous accomplishment”.

What’s so tremendous about it? While Production Management is written in a more modern architecture than its predecessor, making it easier for third party developers to integrate with, ScanForce faced the challenge of not having access to the source code due to arrangements that Sage made with the company who was contracted to write the module. While lack of access to source code made writing the integration that much more difficult, their in-house development team was able to make it happen thanks to ScanForce’s modern architecture.

“Choice is good”

Choice is good. It’s really important for growing businesses that they have the flexibility they need to remain agile in the face of constant change. And we don’t want to hobble our customers as they work to make the technology investment decisions that are right for them.

– Timothy Harfield, Product Marketing, Sage 100cloud

While Sage Production Management is a feature rich offering that will meet many of the core needs of manufacturers using Sage 100cloud, it does not inherently include multi-bin management or barcode scanning. Rather than restrict users to certain providers of these solutions, Sage encourages collaboration with partners like ScanForce to provide options for users to implement the right tool set. Harfield continues:

I’m thrilled by their accomplishment as a testament to the values of trust, customizability, and connectedness that we embed into everything we do in Sage 100cloud.

ScanForce Knows Manufacturing

After the opening remarks by Harfield, ScanForce’s Director of Sales, Steve Showalter, gave a little background on the company and their manufacturing suite, which includes Bill of Materials Production Entry, Work Order Automation, and of course the new Production Management Automation.

He also showed a slide showing a list of well-known brands whose products are made using ScanForce’s Manufacturing tools.

Demo Time!

After setting the stage, Showalter did a live demonstration of the ScanForce solution, including data capture on the mobile device and the flow of data into Sage 100cloud.

Ready to watch? See it all here!

ScanForce Announces Production Management Automation

January 22, 2020 by Darcy Boerio

The release of Sage Production Management made big headlines in the Sage 100 community in 2019. Replacing several legacy applications – Work Order and MRP – the new module is written in the “framework” essentially meaning that it has more modern technology that is consistent with much of the rest of Sage 100cloud.

Here’s a helpful reference for more about Production Management itself:

Sage 100 Work Order vs Production Management

Manufacturing is a big vertical for Sage 100, with many Sage 100 partners reporting an uptick in adoption of Sage 100 as a whole by manufacturers in 2019. For new Sage 100cloud adopters, this is a no-brainer. They won’t have an option to use the legacy WO and MRP.

But for existing Sage 100cloud customers, they need to decide when the time is right for them to switch over (they’ll all have to make the move eventually). Adoption by this group has been slow by all accounts, which is not uncommon when people are being asked to leave what they know for something new that hasn’t been on the market long enough to garner proven success. Naturally people want others to be the “guinea pigs” and identify holes in the solution that the publisher can repair before they jump into the fray.

One such hole was the lack of an integration to ScanForce’s mobile barcode scanning technology. Users of Work Order and MRP were previously able to use mobile barcode scanning devices by ScanForce to automate actions like capturing material issues and completions as well as Labor Tracking. Only after the release was ScanForce able to access the functionality in order to develop their integration to Production Management.

Another problem that needed to be resolved after the initial release was that it didn’t initially integrate with DSD/ScanForce Multi-Bin, which is included out-of-the box for free with every license of Sage 100cloud. So if you were using the free multi-bin tool that comes with Sage and you wanted to move to Production Management, you would need to adopt a different multi-bin tool or forego multi-bin functionality in the PM process.

Fortunately, both of these issues have been resolved! In December, 2019, ScanForce announced compatibility between Production Management and DSD/ScanForce Multi-Bin. And today they’ve announced the February 1 general availability of the integration of their barcode scanning technology with Production Management.

You can read more about the solution on the ScanForce blog and/or join them for a live webinar:

Keep an eye on Wayne’s blog as things develop – you know he’ll give you the scoop!

Sage 100 Work Order vs Production Management

May 22, 2019 by Wayne Schulz

Sage released their Production Management module for Sage 100 on May 14, 2019. This module is the replacement for their Work Order module. It is feature comparable and also includes significant new enhancement ( see PDF below).

During 2019 Sage has committed to also releasing MRP and an updated Sage 100 Manufacturing which will work with Sage Production Management to extend manufacturing capabilities for Sage 100 and Sage 100cloud.

This handy comparison chart has been updated to show the difference in features between Sage 100 Work Order and the new Production Management Module.