If you use Sage 100 for Production Management, you know how powerful the system can be. However, you may have identified gaps in what Sage provides such as cumbersome data entry for inventory accuracy, labor tracking, and production efficiency. Sage 100 Production Management powered by ScanForce solves those pain points.
ScanForce Sage 100 production enhancements address issues that manufacturers and warehouses have faced, from the inability to pre-allocate inventory to manual labor tracking and production management (PM) step status updates. With these powerful new features, Sage 100 users can now achieve real-time inventory accuracy, streamlined production workflows, and smarter labor cost allocation — all without leaving the ScanForce handheld environment.
Although ScanForce’s Sage 100 Production Management enhancement has numerous benefits for your operation, these five are key in helping you optimize inventory, job costing, and overall productivity.
Enhancement #1: Work Ticket Material Management
Knowing where to go and what to get is a key element in efficient item management. Sage 100 Production Management does not allow the lot or serial numbers to a work ticket, so it couldn’t support directed picking. So, operations resorted to a two-step process: directing the picker to go and get a part or product and then bring it to the production area where someone would confirm it was the right item. Besides built-in duplicative work, that process is vulnerable to mistakes, which could lead to machinery damage or a wasted batch of product.
What The Work Ticket Material Management Enhancement Does
ScanForce designed its Sage 100 Production Management enhancement to allow you to pre-allocate parts and products by lot or serial number and auto-allocate based on business rules.
It extends the standard capabilities of Sage 100 Production Management, Multi-Bin, and ScanForce Production Management Automation, bringing the flexibility of Sales Order to Production Management. This enhancement allows you to manually allocate a bin, lot, or serial number to a work ticket. It also allows allocating a lot or serial number for non-bin warehouse items, and you have the option to auto-allocate work tickets based on ticket release date, expiration date, bin location order, or last inbound.
This feature guides employees through the pick path on their scanners, showing them the bin and lot or serial number and completes the two-step pick and check, eliminating the need for a second employee.
In addition to creating a more efficient process, this enhancement to Sage 100 manufacturing automation capabilities allows you to reserve inventory for production that may have been picked for other sales orders and reserve items for specialized manufacturing processes. You can also pick to stage rather than have your team perform unvalidated bin transfers.
Enhancement #2: Production Management Labor Dilution
This Sage 100 Production Management enhancement automatically divides time across multiple work tickets. With this feature, employees enter time in the time clock application as they normally do. Then, the ScanForce enhancement highlights overlapping entries in the Labor Tracking Console. The system sends data to Sage 100 Labor Entry as a total “Hours Worked” without the actual start and stop times. That detail will remain in the ScanForce management console.
The Benefits of the Labor Dilution Feature
This Sage 100 manufacturing automation enhancement will save time and help your bottom line:
- No manual time allocation updates in Sage 100
- No guesswork and errors from manual time updates
- Better cost estimates to price work correctly and protect profit margins
- Clear visibility into how employees spend their time across jobs
- Improved workforce utilization to avoid bottlenecks or spreading employees too thin
Enhancement #3: Punch Clock
ScanForce enhanced the Punch Clock feature to allow users to enter time without selecting a work ticket. Some production workers may find it difficult to accurately track time against specific tickets, for example, supervisors overseeing an entire production process or warehouse workers completing tasks related to multiple projects. However, accurate labor allocation and costing require keeping track of that time.
Our Sage 100 Production Management enhancement tracks all hours worked in a shift and uses the labor dilution feature to divide their time.
Enhancement #4: PM Step Status Update
This Sage 100 manufacturing automation enhancement gives you visibility into the progress your team makes on projects. Employees communicate the step status on a work ticket by scanning the work ticket number and following prompts to update the status. A global option is available that automatically enters a default status when employees scan. With this enhancement, employees enter real-time data from scanners, instead of entering it later in Sage.
Enhancement #5: Work Ticket Completions by Shipping Order
ScanForce’s Sage 100 Product Management enhancements include a new menu option on handhelds, “WT Completions by SO,” that prompts users on where to add the warehouse and bin location and sales order number. Then, the system finds work tickets linked to that sales order number and automatically loads the full remaining quantity for any non-lot or serial items. The employee has the ability to review the data the system collects and send it when ready.
This feature makes it easy to complete multiple work tickets at one time and eliminates manual entry and errors.
Optimize Sage 100 Manufacturing Automation Processes
These enhancements represent a significant step forward in production accuracy, inventory control, and labor tracking in Sage 100. Using ScanForce’s Multi-Bin and automation tools maximizes the ROI from Sage 100 Production Management.
To learn more, watch our recent webinar and contact us for a demo or consultation to show you how these new tools will enhance your operation.
