Overall Satisfaction with Infor VISUAL
Infor Visual was selected as as an enterprise wide tool for accounting, MRP, manufacturing process control, and inventory control for US operations. It was selected as a Y2K solution to the home-grown MRP system used at that time. The software helped the design of process control for business and manufacturing, document control for BOM design and changes as well as business information for labor and material costing to develop costing models for sales. The quality control modules were not used.
- Infor Visual has a standard way of addressing business operations: sales orders, invoicing, reporting. It is easy to train operators used to using a manual or other ERP system.
- Material control is easy for production runs, R&D material lists and repairs. The process of receiving, issuing and returning material to inventory is facilitated by standard interfaces that are easily learned by material control operators.
- Engineering changes to bills of material are facilitated by the "engineering Master" flexible editing capability. The version control for the BOM's can be as detailed or vague as the process designed dictates. One item of a BOM or the entire BOM can be changed quickly and approved for production that day.
- At times a "shadow part" is necessary in the manufacturing process. This shadow part does not require an inventory transaction but is made a as a separate process - sometimes out of sequence to the general process flow. Infor Visual ver 6.3.5 does not have that capability.
- When generating forms for business and manufacturing operations Infor Visual ver 6.3.5 has a limited number of options. To change or add forms requires an unsupported editor. When the stock and custom options are depleted an outside programming module is required as well as programmers to develop the forms.
- While free software upgrades to the main operations modules have been part of the maintenance agreement. One upgrade required database and hardware support not justifiable for the current business model. The system was frozen at the current version at that time.
- There is no easy way to differentiate between engineering documentation and production documentation.
- I cannot comment on business impact.
SAP Business One was selected for the China Division for cost and ease of training reasons. It does not have the capabilities required for the main office accounting or product engineering. It also was not available at the time of Visual Manufacturing selection.
Epicor Eclipse was not available at the time of Visual Manufacturing selection. It has many if the features lacking in Infor Visual and integrates better with SalesForce.com CRM. Epicor is one of the upgrade systems that are being considered.
SAP ERP is a large piece of software that requires long planning, implementation and training cycles. Its complexity requires a large support contingent even in a cloud implementation.
Epicor Eclipse was not available at the time of Visual Manufacturing selection. It has many if the features lacking in Infor Visual and integrates better with SalesForce.com CRM. Epicor is one of the upgrade systems that are being considered.
SAP ERP is a large piece of software that requires long planning, implementation and training cycles. Its complexity requires a large support contingent even in a cloud implementation.