Merit Matters Blog

The bottom line: you don't want to be one of the companies caught without an adequate Materials Control software system! You need to have the prevenative tools and controls in place to quickly and effictively perform investigations and measure the potential impact of any quality incidents. Unfortunately, many companies today do not have adequate systems in place and are putting their company at risk.

Benefits of the MAXLife Materials Control Workbench:

• Improve efficiency by removing manual or paper-based processes.
• Adhere to regulatory compliance requirements.
• Forward and backward traceability for all material lot / serial numbers.
• Streamline and automate product traceability processes.
• Improve quality control and customer satisfaction.
• Quickly notify Customers, Vendors, or employees of potential quality incidents.

With the MAXLife Materials Control Management Workbench, Life Sciences companies can minimize risk, maximize product safety, and deliver greater value to their customers.

Learn more about MAXLife Life Sciences software.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new MAXLife ERP Software website! The new site provides a fresh new look and feel meant to enhance the overall user experience. It has been updated with new product information, demos, white papers, and deeper, more content-rich landing pages.

Learn more about MAXLife ERP:

• Electronic Batch Records: Reduce manual processing and operating costs by tracking Batch Records electronically, having them go through a life cycle of approvals, security, and workflows along the way.
• Life Sciences Quality Portal: Manage all of their quality and compliance unstructured documents - such as SOPs, Quality Programs, Training materials, etc... - in a 21 CFR Part 820 compliant environment.
• Materials Control Workbench: Access and view any material lot and / or serial number, the status of that material, and all of the locations of that material - at the click of a button!
• CAPA Incident Management: Streamline and automate Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA) incident and non-conformance management processes to correct and prevent issues, measure outcomes, and continuously monitor the system.
• Cost of Quality Management: Track and analyze all costs related to performing quality processes to improve product quality and reduce the cost of quality.

MAXLife Life Sciences Software is based on Microsoft's most advanced and feature-rich ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics AX. Gartner, Inc. has named Microsoft Dynamics AX a “Leader” in its ERP Magic Quadrant, and Nucleus Research has found that Microsoft Dynamics AX customers achieve returns in areas of increased visibility, increased productivity, and reduced costs. And with MAXLife Cloud ERP, you can give your employees real-time visibility and anytime, anywhere access to the critical business data they need to be successful - without compromising functionality or security.

MAXLife software increases your visibility into product performance, resulting in better decisions and increased revenues and profits. It enables quality control and quality assurance processes to work together as part of the business system, and to be transparently available for reviewing and reporting. With MAXLife, you can track product quality, proactively see and respond to manufacturing variability, meet GMPs, Sarbanes Oxley, and 21 CFR Part 11 and Part 820 requirements, and simplify computer systems validation.

Contact Merit Solutions to learn more about MAXLife Life Sciences Software!

Many Life Sciences companies we talk to today need to define solid business strategies and goals in order to satisfy investors and secure future funding.

As these companies secure funding and look toward long-term planning, they’ll need access to data to provide business insights and help guide strategy. Therefore, they require an enterprise resource planning solution that goes beyond the basics of planning, budgeting, bookkeeping, and managing cash flow. These organizations need the ability to explore their own data to extract insights for strategic planning and to provide reliable financial forecasts. They require a solution that can extract added value from financial data to help improve decision making and better guide the business.

MAXLife for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps Life Sciences companies meet the needs for early stage funding, while enabling them to position themselves for later-round funding by bringing together people, processes, and technologies to help drive business success:

• Take advantage of new market opportunities or fend off new competitors to gain market share.
• Plan current and future capacity relative to planned growth.
• Quickly analyze all aspects of the business to enable better business decisions in high-risk situations.

With MAXLife for Microsoft Dynamics AX, Life Sciences companies have access to accurate, real-time information about product costs, sales trends, and profit margins. This enables more informed strategic decisions about where to spend money, how to grow revenue, and how to strengthen margins.

Our client’s primary focus is to improve and preserve the long term health of individuals one patient at a time. To be successful in this regard, our client needed to utilize up to date information technology to better serve its customers. Prior to selecting MAXLife Cloud, our client was managing their business with spreadsheets and QuickBooks. Company data was located in fragmented silos of systems and machines, causing redundant manual processes and a duplication of effort. As the company developed an aggressive business model that included expansion plans, they needed systems that would improve visibility, streamline processes, and support exponential growth. For these reasons, our client began looking for a new ERP solution.

They ended up choosing Merit Solutions’ MAXLife Cloud because it is simple to use and deploy, is a comprehensive ERP solution that connects all departments with real-time information, and gives them the flexibility to grow, expand, and adapt as needed. MAXLife Cloud was the most cost-effective solution for the company because it works like and with familiar Microsoft technology they use every day. Connectivity and integration with Microsoft SharePoint and other products will enable them to maximize IT investments, minimize training, and increase user adoption. With MAXLife Cloud, our client will utilize integrated document management capabilities, enabling them to control access to business information, provide full versioning, and FDA compliance support. And by deploying MAXLife in the cloud with Merit’s RapidOn Implementation methodology, they can take advantage of lower costs, a more rapid deployment, regular updates, and secure data.

“We are very excited that our client has selected MAXLife Cloud with Dynamics AX to help drive their business growth,” said Mike AuBuchon, Director, Merit Solutions, Inc. “Our team is looking forward to helping them realize the benefits of an integrated Cloud ERP system that will improve efficiency and productivity, enable profitable growth, and support their unique document management needs. We’re confident MAXLife Cloud will be a great fit for them, and other Life Sciences companies with similar business requirements.”

In a global buyers’ market influenced by low-wage competitors in developing countries, the need to reduce costs drives many manufacturers to seek efficiencies anywhere they can find them, including reductions in inventories, outsourcing, and new partnerships with downstream service and third-party logistics providers. Each can represent an effective strategy for cost or quality control, but also introduce new challenges of transparency and communication. Global manufacturers need to connect not only with their own network of facilities, but also with other key supply chain partners. And as more warehouse and logistics management moves outside the scope of internal control, companies deal with greater risk of misplaced goods, costly transportation mistakes, and traceability errors or gaps through multi-tier distribution systems.

Meeting this - or any other challenges already discussed in previous articles - demands much greater two-way communication and collaboration throughout an organization and between all participants in its supply chain, despite increasing supply chain complexity. Knowledge that exists anywhere in the company or the supply chain must be easily accessible to partners both upstream and downstream so they can respond to changes, improve decision making, and safeguard customer satisfaction.

Microsoft Dynamics AX offers a wealth of tools to streamline and automate processes throughout your supply chain operations, including purchasing, warehouse, and logistics activities. One-time data entry and real-time visibility—both internally and with trading partners in the supply chain—can mean fewer errors and less wasted time. Extend the transparent data delivered by Microsoft Dynamics AX to the people and organizations that help your supply chain succeed. By giving customers, suppliers, and logistics providers direct access to order status, inventory records, load plans, shipment information—whatever data is needed—you can save time, avoid redundant data entry, automate supply chain interactions, respond more quickly to change, and increase customer satisfaction.

With Microsoft Dynamics AX, businesses can:

• Optimize warehouse operations from automated receiving and directed put-away through timely materials draws and electronic Kanban systems.
• Synchronize the movement of goods and materials to achieve just-in-time shop floor or distribution center provisioning.
• Consolidate pick/pack activities, generate labels effortlessly, and easily prepare shipments or build loads.
• Automatically create manifests and send advance shipping notifications (ASNs) and proof of delivery.
• Track shipments and provide customers with self-service access to the status of their goods.
• Reduce order-to-cash and procurement-to-cash cycles by eliminating manual procedures and data delays between supply chain activities and invoicing.

Proactive event management keeps managers and employees on top of the flow of goods and information and helps avoid costly exceptions and missed deliveries. People internally and throughout the supply chain can receive automated alerts and notifications for a variety of conditions ranging from cost changes and order updates to purchase order approval and task completion. When such information quickly reaches the appropriate people and partners, they can take action to keep deliveries on track and provide the service that builds customer loyalty. And since Microsoft Dynamics AX works like and with your familiar Microsoft Office system software, including Outlook, you can save time and money on training and people can get working more effectively after a shorter learning curve. People in your organization can extract and share product and operational information by using familiar desktop tools such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Microsoft Office Project, Microsoft Office Visio, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.

When your business management solution is familiar and easy to use, your people are free to focus on customer satisfaction. And when you and your trade partners can swap information in formats and files that they use themselves, everyone is better able to add value and respond to changes.

Global competition has brought intense new pressures to the supply chains of large manufacturers. Distribution channels and supply networks are becoming more complex in the effort to satisfy customers who want goods faster and at a lower cost than ever.

In this difficult and competitive environment, profitability depends on:

• Gaining visibility across increasingly dispersed manufacturing, supply, and distribution networks.
• Reducing costs, inventories, and lead times by shifting the entire supply chain to a demand-pull rather than product-push orientation.
• Rapidly complying with regulatory requirements and customer initiatives such as radio frequency identification (RFID).
• Enhancing supply chain collaboration to bring new products to market faster and offer advanced services such as vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and warranty or after-sales support services.

These challenges are causing global manufacturers to look to information technology to speed the flow of accurate business information, increase transparency and connectivity, and facilitate collaboration to deliver more value to customers.

By connecting the flow of goods and information through organizations and processes, and by making that information available to everyone who needs it, an appropriate business management solution can:

• Deliver information for faster, proactive decisions and actions at the most effective position in the supply chain and the organizational level.
• Facilitate the interaction between organizations and their often heterogeneous technologies.
• Provide needed data for demand planning and automated replenishment; reducing inventories, costs, and cycle times; and complying with traceability requirements.

Microsoft Dynamics AX offers global manufacturers a business management solution that provides integrated, real-time data in open, standard formats that can be easily shared through communication and collaboration tools—to effectively bridge the entire supply chain. This technology platform and the supply chain management tools built on it can bring greater transparency and connectivity to global supply chains, empowering the people in your organization to meet the challenges of today’s competitive markets. Deploy the solution either on-premise or in the cloud to achieve the benefits of greater supply chain visibility while meeting the varying needs of multi-company organizations.

Microsoft Dynamics AX helps provide better supply chain visibility so companies can:

• Reduce exposure to supply chain risks by increasing timely awareness of changes, delays, or unexpected events.
• Gain real-time insight into any aspect of inventory with detailed, dimensional inventory data based on actual production rates and materials use. Configurable inventory classifications and attributes, including batch and serial numbers, can help you to track items throughout production and distribution.
• Save time and money with complete replenishment life cycle management tools, including automated replenishment signals, to reduce inventories, refine purchasing processes, and implement demand-driven, just-in-time, and vendor-managed inventories.
• Improve customer service when sales and customer service people can deliver faster, more accurate quotes, information about availability or lead times, and order status reports.
• Take advantage of a global, cross-enterprise perspective on orders, logistics, and transportation planning to more effectively consolidate orders, select the best carrier, create more efficient loads, and optimize delivery routing.
• Model subcontractor capacities and understand outsourcing costs to help make faster, more informed decisions.
• Reduce response times by configuring custom alerts, delivered by e-mail or onscreen, to notify the right people of changes or key events that require attention.
• More easily manage chains of control with comprehensive traceability of raw materials or components, products, and shipments, including serial numbers and lots.
• Meet customer demands for product and shipment identification and tracking with full, built-in support for Automated Data Collection Systems (ADCS) or radio frequency identification (RFID).

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides full order and inventory transparency up and down the supply chain. With access to real-time, consolidated views of material and product data, inventory status, order information, production plans, and receipt or delivery status, people can make better decisions and satisfy customer needs with greater profitability. Full integration between Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Office can help you interact more quickly and accurately with your supply chain partners. Greater cross-enterprise transparency can empower sales and operations people with up-to-the-minute, integrated information about promotions, new products, and late-breaking order changes in customer demand planning and production scheduling.

In a couple of recent posts, we've discussed how companies can transform compliance into business benefits and reduce the cost of compliance. Now let's talk about how system controls in Microsoft Dynamics AX helps with data integrity, data security - enabling organizations to put the controls in place to monitor changes in critical data and policy violations.

First, any data that is posted into Microsoft Dynamics AX is updated automatically throughout the application modules via the setup of posting profiles. So when data in one module is changed, the change is automatically updated in another, providing real time and up-to-date information throughout the system.

Second, with Microsoft Dynamics AX you can prove that your data is trustworthy and has not been tampered with. For example, you can control access to data throughout Microsoft Dynamics AX by managing security restrictions on forms, records and data fields for specific user groups and domains, and define and assign rights according to how you want security restrictions managed.

Third, the Record Center in Microsoft Office helps make sure that vital company records, including critical documents (for example, financial reports, supplier contracts, and customer correspondence), are properly retained for legal, compliance, and business purposes and then properly disposed of when no longer needed. The Record Center in Microsoft SharePoint helps control that records are never automatically modified by the system and helps prevent direct tampering of records by versioning any changes made to document contents and by auditing specific types of changes.

It’s also possible to control data integrity through user-defined and centrally managed controls to eliminate manual processes and the possibility of human error. The audit trail system in Microsoft Dynamics AX enables you to identify the origin of an entry; the user who created the entry and the entry date and time. In addition, the Microsoft Dynamics AX Expense Management feature helps managers define and enforce company expense policies to which employees will be held accountable when entering expense reports. Expense policies can be defined to either:

• Warn an employee that they have violated a policy but allow them to submit their expense report, or
• Prevent an employee from submitting the expense report until they have made the necessary changes to adhere to the policy.

Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers an integrated and automated solution designed to help you manage the risks and costs associated with meeting compliance requirements. Furthermore, it extends your investment in Microsoft products and technologies, and gives you deeper visibility into and control of business practices that you can use to generate a competitive advantage.

Ivancic i sinovi was founded in 1991 and manufactures and markets pharmaceutical medicines and dietary products - both in capsules and powder forms. The desire to provide consumers with high quality products, created by the latest in medical technologies, in packaging of contemporary design, yet available to everyone, inspired the idea to begin manufacturing.

Prior to selecting Merit Solutions’ MAXLife with Microsoft Dynamics AX, Ivancic i sinovi used a homegrown system that made it difficult to manage business processes across the organization. The system was not integrated with real-time information, which meant executives and managers were often making decisions based on outdated and incorrect data. Ivancic i sinovi also had industry-specific requirements that would not be met with an out-of-the-box solution. With their homegrown system, they could not track or understand the costs associated with quality control processes, which were time-consuming and people-intensive, and resulted in lost productivity, efficiency, and higher costs. And, with expansion and growth plans, the system could not support the expansion of a production plant.

For these reasons, Ivancic i sinovi began looking for a pharmaceutical quality management solution. In the end, Ivancic i sinovi chose Merit Solutions’ MAXLife with Microsoft Dynamics AX because it is simple to use and deploy, is a comprehensive ERP solution that connects all departments with real-time information, and gives them the flexibility to grow, expand, and adapt as needed.

With MAXLife, Ivancic i sinovi will utilize key quality control and compliance management features specific to pharmaceutical manufacturing. Quality incident and non-conformance management processes will be streamlined and automated with MAXLife’s Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA) capabilities, enabling Ivancic i sinovi to correct and prevent issues, measure outcomes, and continuously monitor the system. Ivancic i sinovi will also be able to track and analyze all of their costs related to performing quality processes with Cost of Quality Management, enabling them to reduce the cost of quality while maintaining product safety.

“We’re extremely happy that Ivancic i sinovi has chosen MAXLife from Merit Solutions to reduce costs, improve quality, and support their business growth,” commented Petar Miljkovic, Director - Europe, Merit Solutions. “With MAXLife, the company can continue providing high quality, innovative pharmaceutical products while reducing costs, improving efficiency and productivity, and providing safe products to their customers.”

About Merit Solutions:

Merit Solutions is a multinational organization that provides IT services and software solutions to help companies improve their business success. Our industry-specific solutions, MAXFood and MAXLife, along with our core Microsoft Dynamics ERP and SharePoint offerings, enable organizations to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve service - while maintaining profitable growth!

A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Merit Solutions is AMR Research Industry Certified in Process Manufacturing for Microsoft Dynamics AX. We have recently been recognized as one of Accounting Today's VAR 100, and had two products named in the Top 15 Add-ons for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. Merit Solutions is a Microsoft Excellence Partner for working successfully and collaboratively with customers and partners across the world.

In Sure Step, projects are a collection of documents, tools and templates that follow the Sure Step implementation methodology. When creating a new project, Sure Step Online Project Wizard will always retrieve the latest content ensuring that project documents are up to date. As the documents reside on SharePoint, it enables easy collaboration of the whole project team.

Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Online Project Wizard is a SharePoint hosted Silverlight application which harnesses the power of both SharePoint and cloud-based content storage. It can be hosted either on your local SharePoint 2010 environment or on SharePoint Online.

After a simple one time process for manually deploying the Project Wizard to the desired SharePoint environment described in the User Guide, Sure Step project can be created on the same site collection or any other accessible locally. (If the site collection resides on another SharePoint farm or web application additional configuration of the destination web application is required. This will be described in one of the later posts.)

Each time a Project Wizard is started it retrieves the configuration information and checks for compatibility. Only if a new version is required (which actually means that there were significant changes to the Sure Step content metadata model) a user will have to download the latest version and redeploy it to the destination SharePoint environment before continuing with the project creation.

Project Wizard retrieves the latest content metadata and generates the options offered in the wizard itself. Content as well as all the options offered in the Project Wizard are dynamically loaded from the Sure Step Online content repository. This enables seamless update of the Sure Step content, addition of new tools and templates, new solutions, project types and languages. This architecture ensures that each time a project is created using the wizard, it will contain the latest content available from Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Online without the need to regularly download and install client and content updates (which can be around 400MB for each language).

The Sure Step content is categorized into seven (industry related) solutions, six Dynamics product lines, five project types for implementation engagement type and numerous accelerators for diagnostic phase and optimization offering. An inventory of more than 750 tools and templates are available for use on each project with partial translation in nine languages. Projects are created for a specific Solution, Dynamics Product, Engagement type and a selected Project Type or accelerator. New project contains copies of all Sure Step documents applicable to selected criteria.

Sure Step Online Project Wizard can be deployed on the following environments:

• Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
• Microsoft SharePoint Online

More info and the links to resources can be found here.

According to a study from AMR Research, on average only 15 percent of employees are licensed to use their company’s ERP solution and 46 percent of ERP licenses remain unused. Because a limited portion of the organization is using the solution, the potential for productivity benefits and growth remains untapped.

Why aren’t ERP solutions adopted more broadly, by more employees, and for more of their daily tasks? Unfortunately, these solutions are often identified as too difficult to use; too rigid; or both. In one of their reports, Forrester Research concluded that “poorly designed user interfaces can profoundly affect the bottom line. The expenses associated with a bad UI, over the course of the application’s lifetime, may end up being many times the cost of the application itself.”

The negative impact of low usability can include increased training times, a lack of user adoption, and a decrease in workplace productivity. Additionally, when people don’t use the ERP system, mission-critical processes can be compromised because there is no access to or enforcement of standard operations and best practices. Furthermore, individuals often track pertinent business information using separate spreadsheets because using a centralized system is too complex and time-consuming.

Although user productivity can be difficult to calculate, it should be a critical factor when evaluating, purchasing, and implementing an ERP solution. Overall, ERP solutions have demonstrably improved user productivity. Research conducted in 2007 by Keystone Strategy included an analysis of widely accepted usability tests, such as Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI), which showed that business productivity is a product of six factors. These factors include:

• Collaboration, including the ability to submit work for review, obtain comments or approval from others, and share information and tasks with trade partners.
• Business insight, including visibility across departments and real-time access to accurate, relevant data in context of the process or decision where it will be used.
• Flexibility, including the ability to depart from transactional tasks to manage problems or exceptions.
• Usability, including easy navigation, the number of steps required in tasks, instructions and prompts that are helpful rather than cryptic, and the user’s overall command of functionality.
• Familiarity, including how easy and intuitive the system is to learn and the sense that information and tasks correlate with the user’s job role and activities.
• Transactional efficiency, including speed and reliability in accomplishing or automating common, repetitive tasks.

Research has shown that after an ERP solution is implemented, users often struggle to learn how to use it and find the information they need. Complaints range from “it’s hard to learn” and “it’s not integrated with my other tools” to “it’s hard to extract information” and “it’s not flexible enough for real-world situations.” Such objections, which are addressed by the six dimensions of user productivity, account in part for the low user adoption rate discovered in the AMR Research study. These challenges are a reflection of solutions designed with a focus on transactional and functional processes, rather than user productivity and comprehensive, end-to-end business processes.

Microsoft Dynamics AX provides the flexibility you need to optimize user productivity, improve organizational agility, and accommodate future growth. Role Centers and the RoleTailored user experience can be easily personalized for individual users to streamline tasks and speed decision-making. A variety of options for accessing business information - including Enterprise Portal and the Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office - make it easy to extend Microsoft Dynamics AX functionality and productivity tools to workers across the entire organization and throughout the supply chain. Full integration with Microsoft technologies and products helps you maximize existing IT investments and minimize user training time, resulting in a low total cost of ownership (TCO). The flexible, scalable platform gives you the ability to easily add users or functionality as your business expands. In addition, the solution is readily tailored and can be extended / adapted precisely to your needs now and in the future.

Learn how you can increase productivity and efficiency with Microsoft Dynamics AX.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new MAXFood ERP website: http://www.maxfoodsoftware.com.

MAXFood Safety ERP streamlines how food companies operate according to the guidelines of the Food Safety Modernization Act, and according to Good Manufacturing Processes. MAXFood Safety provides more than just lot traceability and corrective actions; it enables you to identify, document, monitor and follow up on critical control points, thereby supporting compliance with even the most stringent regulations and reporting requirements, including GFSI and SQF protocols.

Learn more about MAXFood Safety:

• Food Safety Portal: Increase control over operations, reduce the cost of compliance, and increase productivity with one integrated quality control and food safety document management solution for HACCP, Recalls, SOPs, Incidents, Audits, Complaints, GMPs and more.
• Food Safety Incident Management: Quickly generate a Corrective Action or Preventive Action request that routes through review, root cause, corrective action taken, and verification stages. Generate multiple Food Safety Incident reports automatically, providing an effective mechanism for tracking the source and costs of problems.
• Food Recall Management Workbench: Streamline and automate the recall process, enabling you to not only perform effective product recalls, but to provide concrete documentation and proof that you followed all FDA GMP mandated recall procedures.

With MAXFood for Microsoft Dynamics AX, food companies can minimize risk, maximize product safety, and deliver greater value to their customers. And with MAXFood Cloud ERP, you can also give your employees real-time visibility and anytime, anywhere access to the critical business data they need to be successful - without compromising functionality or security.

Automating the processes associated with standard operating procedures, such as recording tasks and adjusting requirements, helps organizations free up people so they can focus on the activities that add value to their business. Microsoft Dynamics AX helps organizations enforce Standard Operating Procedures by automating the process of creating and sharing business process documentation and standard operating procedure documents.

Perform More Processes Faster Automated workflows are crucial for enforcing compliance. Manual processes slow productivity. Microsoft Dynamics AX helps organizations to perform more processes faster and more consistently. For example, it’s possible to create individual workflows or business processes to automate compliance with corporate policies and procedures. Microsoft Dynamics AX workflows enable you to configure workflow approval processes based on pre-defined templates to fit your business needs. It’s possible to track the status and history of a specific workflow instance to analyze and determine if changes need to be made to the workflow to improve efficiency. And, with Microsoft Dynamics AX, Web services can be used to check and ensure compliance with regulations such as trade restrictions automatically at the sales order entry level.

Better Internal Controls with Approval Workflows for Financial Journals Standard Operating Procedures also include enforcing internal controls for specific, pre-defined actions and processes. This can be especially relevant in financial processes. For example, Microsoft Dynamics AX enables the setup of approval processes on selected financial journals on a per journal name basis. The approval process allows the user to define the conditions under which approvals are required and to specify the approver(s). The workflow infrastructure updates the workflow status of the journal as needed to provide visibility as to whether the workflow status is pending approval, approved, rejected, etc. And, the workflow status controls the actions that may occur during workflow execution, such as not allowing posting or generating payments until the approval workflow is completed.

Document and Record Tasks and Activities Automatically Accurate documentation of tasks and activities and making this information easily accessible are crucial components to enforcing standard operating procedures successfully. Microsoft Dynamics AX delivers the capability of logging and recording tasks and activities and making the information available from the Compliance Center, in Microsoft Office documents and in Microsoft SharePoint sites. For example, it’s possible to create documentation for processes or training-oriented documentation using the integrated Task Recorder in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Based on the recorded tasks and user activity in the application, documents can be generated that include step-by-step instructions and illustrations in a number of Microsoft Office document formats, such as Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentations and process-oriented documentation in Microsoft Office Visio ® . Additional information and steps can be added, including company or organization policies and procedures. The document can then be stored, accessed, and controlled from the Compliance Center Document Library. This is a SharePoint document library, so you can control access to this document library, if necessary.

Improve Employee Compliance Awareness and Training Publishing compliance practices and standard operating procedures and making them available within the organization is an important part of managing compliance; however; employee training in compliance practices and company policy is also key. Management can help improve compliance awareness throughout the organization and train employees in corporate policies by using Questionnaire in Microsoft Dynamics AX. You can design and execute compliance-related questionnaires and mandatory online training to ensure that employees are up-to-date on new corporate compliance policies and procedures and enforce training in areas where improvements are needed.

Many manufacturing organizations dread the risks and costs associated with a change in ERP systems. Unfortunately, this mindset often overshadows the fact that old, unsupported hardware and software that was designed 10-20 years ago is expensive to maintain and can rarely serve today’s real-time data exchange requirements. However, a comprehensive, integrated software solution that can be implemented quickly, customized as needed, and used easily by employees can provide a return on investment in just months.

When choosing and implementing a manufacturing ERP solution, decision-makers need to choose the most cost-effective solution that:

• Enables flexible business processes that can be adapted over time to evolving circumstances.
• Provides real-time visibility across all business processes, including interfaces with corporate, customer, and supply partner systems.
• Permits multinational manufacturing companies to take advantage of shared processes and best practices across the value chain.
• Supports advanced manufacturing strategies that help meet the challenges of global business and provide an edge over competitors.

An integrated, effective solution can very quickly deliver a return on investment, reducing IT costs from a total cost of ownership (TCO) perspective and capitalizing on existing productivity tools and IT investments. The right manufacturing solution can also:

• Create a homogeneous platform compatible with existing databases and standard integration and development tools.
• Be easy for employees to learn and use, minimizing training while quickly maximizing productivity.
• Be rapidly deployed for a faster return on investment.
• Support shared services and processes across multiple locations.
• Scale and adapt as the company’s needs grow for a cost-effective solution over the long term.

Microsoft Dynamics AX offers multinational companies a manufacturing management solution and an integration platform that gathers and integrates real-time operational information so business managers can more easily access and analyze critical data, respond to changes, and make decisions with confidence. Whether deployed on-premise or in the cloud, Microsoft Dynamics AX empowers manufacturers to meet the challenges of today’s global markets by reducing costs, enhancing operational flexibility, and connecting the plant floor to the back office in productive new ways.

Most manufacturing organizations already make use of Microsoft technology in everyday activities - such as Microsoft Office, SharePoint, SQL Server, Windows Server, and more. Implementing Microsoft Dynamics AX for plant operations takes advantage of those existing investments while increasing overall visibility so that managers and employees can see exactly what is happening on the plant floor; understand how it relates to supply, order, and financial information both locally and across the enterprise; and use that integrated knowledge to reduce costs, react effectively to changes, and delight customers.

The common pitfalls and challenges of a Food Safety Incident Management system include:

• Inability to link related problems
• Inconsistent investigation process
• Confusion over the difference between Corrective Action and Preventive Action
• Time-consuming approval process
• Changes to the action plan mid-stream
• No means to generate metrics

Benefits of MAXFood's Food Safety Incident Management capability:

• Quickly document Food Safety non-conformances and record all relevant incident information.
• Automate the processes of assigning non-conformances, investigations, and corrective actions.
• Improve management of Food Safety Incidents with root cause analysis and real-time trend reporting on food safety issues.
• Streamline compliance with food safety regulations, including HACCP, SQF, and ISO.
• Improve brand loyalty and customer satisfaction by continuously improving food safety and responding quickly to potential incidents.

MAXFood's Food Safety Incident Management capabilities enable you to increase control and assuredness for how your organization operates. With MAXFood, you can generate a Corrective Action or Preventive Action request that routes through review, root cause, corrective action taken, and verification stages. This Corrective Action tracking software generates multiple reports automatically, providing an effective mechanism for tracking the source and costs of problems.

Using a systematic approach to correcting and preventing issues, measuring the outcome and continuously monitoring the system can ensure that a company is compliant, effective and efficient. And, having a well-thought-out Food Safety Incident Management system can result in successful audits, fewer investigations, less product loss, better customer satisfaction, and an increase in overall operational efficiencies.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is designed to improve and automate your business operations. Within medium to large enterprise companies, these processes - such as quality, production, inventory, reporting, order entry, accounting, purchasing, etc... - are traditionally managed by several disparate, or even manual, systems.

Companies that operate with disparate or manual systems often experience many unnecessary costs and delays. Examples include duplicate data entry, data corruption, more training, greater IT support and software incompatibilities. However, the largest impact of disparate systems is the inability to access information timely to enable good decision making.

As a result, there is a growing trend toward the use of a single ERP system to manage the entire business.

Through this single software system approach, companies can control the details of their businesses by linking all departments together. This maximizes productivity, reduces costs, and increases profitability. With a centralized ERP system, companies can erase information boundaries and deliver the critical information needed for rapid, effective decision-making.

Here are the top ten business benefits of eliminating silos of data and utilizing a single ERP software system. By understanding these benefits, companies can understand how to simplify their operational processes.

1. Reduce Costs: Challenged to do more with less, many IT departments are finding that the cost of maintaining multiple business systems is simply too high. With a single software system in place, companies can eliminate many of the costs associated with IT, including high implementation, integration, training, and support costs. Additionally, many companies experience reduction in overall license costs when moving to a single business system approach.
2. Single Point of Control: Another major benefit of a single ERP system is the “single point of control.” A single software system will be the trusted source of information for an organization. By integrating all business processes into a single system, companies are able to simplify business workflow and increase productivity and efficiency.
3. Eliminate Redundant Data Entry. Eliminating redundant data entry improves productivity. Companies can also gain organization-wide insight across the applications through one easy-to-use and familiar interface. For example, inventory, formulation, production, and lot and batch control updates are processed once with real-time transactional posting.
4. Improve Data Integrity: As the sole system for all company data, enterprise wide ERP is perfectly suited for organizations that require high levels of data integrity and control. With a sin-gle software solution, business information will be entered in one central location and will always be the same across company departments and locations.
5. Better Business Insight: Access to business critical data - no matter where it's located - is needed for rapid, effective decision making. By integrating all departments into one business system, companies have accurate, up-to-the minute information about product costs, sales trends, profit margins, and more.
6. Respond to Changing Business Conditions: Responding quickly to business needs can be the key to gaining and keeping a competitive edge. But disparate IT systems can get in the way. A single enterprise wide software system that is flexible and easy to use can play a critical role in helping your business achieve the agility it requires to respond and adapt to changing business conditions.
7. Speed and Simplify Training: When utilizing a single software system, user training and adoption is easier and faster. Since employees only have one system to learn and use, as opposed to several different software interfaces, companies save time and effort during the training process.
8. Manage Support: One software system means one software vendor, which prevents multiple vendors from passing software issues off to other software vendors. Also, instead of calling multiple support help desks, there is one support team responsible for addressing all of a company’s software questions or issues.
9. Minimal Maintenance: Overall, since software maintenance is lower, support issues are fewer with a single system. Rather than juggling support issues for numerous systems, a company’s IT department can handle the regular updates and backups for one software system. Single systems also keep network issues to a minimum.
10. Easier Upgrade Process: In addition to minimal maintenance, enterprise wide systems are easier to up-grade, too. Multiple software systems can conflict when one system is updated and no longer works correctly with another system. These differences are eliminated with single system upgrades.

Overall, the benefits of a single software system fulfill the original intentions of ERP as it allows companies to manage their business as simply and efficiently as possible.