Companies that are not already offering the capabilities described in Part Two will likely not be able to tap the recent surge in the federal and defense markets. Conversely, those vendors and their users—government contractors—who can deliver comprehensive solutions that satisfy the exacting, stringent requirements of federal agencies are in the driver's seat to capture that market segment. Many customers require weekly progress reports and may be comfortable with the Microsoft Project format, but the product on its own cannot give the visibility and scheduling over a great number of concurrent projects, and that is where the products from niche vendors come into the picture within the mid-market manufacturing segment and even for smaller defense contractors.
Increased federal adoption of ERP systems may imply that these have been increasingly offering a government endemic functionality. As an example, leading ERP vendors provide procurement software that works with pertinent laws and regulations, such as the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), DoD Contracting Regulations, General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), Federal Supply Schedules (FSS), etc. Also, they provide human resource (HR) systems that align with military or general schedule pay rates, and financial systems that comply with Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP) practices for government financial systems. Further, the Tax and Revenue Management module within some ERP suites provides federal, state, and local government agencies tools to automate the tax collection process by enabling constituents to conduct and view financial transactions.
In addition to the above-depicted government-oriented manufacturing and accounting capabilities (i.e., work breakdown structure (WBS) with native earned value measurement (EVM), some companies require an ability to track every product, each of its subassemblies or parts, and its stage in the production cycle, as a prerequisite to production efficiency and profitability, which is especially true for contracting MRO organizations. Additionally, the ability to store and access quality tests history data on an ongoing basis and the ability to thoroughly analyze that data are crucial in keeping costs low and quality high.
This is Part Three of a three-part tutorial.
Part One defined the entry of small vendors into federal contracts.
Part Two discussed dealing with federal contract requirements.
Service Parts Management
The need for better service parts management is finally gaining top-level management attention in many A&D companies since excessive carrying costs and obsolescence losses are being recognized as an unexploited opportunity for savings and a better bottom-line performance.
The situation becomes even more complicated with rotable parts, such as interchangeable elements of an aircraft that are removed, rebuilt, or reinstalled, almost as a rule always on a different aircraft. In this industry where every nut and bolt is important for safe operation, it takes an immense attention and effort to track interchangeable components and subassemblies for costing, replacement scheduling, and time-to-failure prediction. A&D companies design low-volume, high-cost products for high reliability, but still maintain stocks of complex and expensive spares, since in this industry, the impact of any failure is large and requires adequate stocks of parts at several locations for rapid replacement in case of repair. On one hand, minimizing the number of new parts introduced into the market (and subsequently into inventory) should be a major aim, particularly as parts face obsolescence from new product introductions, but, on the other hand, rotable parts and harvesting repaired components only add to the complexity and efficiency of this process.
Lot and serial tracking capabilities, the so-called tail effectivity, permits users to tie every part (within part lists and diagrams) on a plane back to that one entity. Serial number (tail) effectivity for the aircraft and aerospace industry is enabled since within the astute ERP system, a table should carry information on each serial or tail number for each item used, including the original date the serial or tail number was added, received, or stocked, as well as item information, such as the original vendor lot number, inventory quantities, weighted average costs, and the last inventory adjustment date.
The MRO companies also have very stringent requirements they must meet regarding tracking parts and condition codes. This functionality allows for demand by item condition to be matched against inventory by item condition, and it also allows for inventory management and MRP-based supply planning by condition code. While these functionalities may sound ordinary and appear to be offered by many vendors as supported' when responding to requests for information (RFI), subsequent product demonstration often reveals the need for some tweaking or even for a major modification in order to satisfy stringent customer requirements. The devil is always in details.
For a detailed discussion see MRO and Spare Parts Management Considerations.
Challenges
Incidentally, while the decision of some and not necessarily all large vendors to embrace the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development environment is prudent given a majority of their existing customers on UNIX and Oracle platforms, the conundrum for these vendors might be the fact that the vast majority of their new and prospective customers are the companies that have less than $200 million (USD) in revenues and with a likely preference for Microsoft-centric technologies and who might not be too excited about a seemingly more complex J2EE environment. At the same time, the need to technologically modernize the product and concurrently provide smooth migrations to existing customers, while investing lots of research and development (R&D) funds in functional enhancements as to be ahead (or at least abreast) of the pack will be a significant challenge for a smaller vendor.
source
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/federal-contract-management-and-vendors-readiness-part-three-meeting-federal-requirements-17725/
Increased federal adoption of ERP systems may imply that these have been increasingly offering a government endemic functionality. As an example, leading ERP vendors provide procurement software that works with pertinent laws and regulations, such as the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), DoD Contracting Regulations, General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), Federal Supply Schedules (FSS), etc. Also, they provide human resource (HR) systems that align with military or general schedule pay rates, and financial systems that comply with Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP) practices for government financial systems. Further, the Tax and Revenue Management module within some ERP suites provides federal, state, and local government agencies tools to automate the tax collection process by enabling constituents to conduct and view financial transactions.
In addition to the above-depicted government-oriented manufacturing and accounting capabilities (i.e., work breakdown structure (WBS) with native earned value measurement (EVM), some companies require an ability to track every product, each of its subassemblies or parts, and its stage in the production cycle, as a prerequisite to production efficiency and profitability, which is especially true for contracting MRO organizations. Additionally, the ability to store and access quality tests history data on an ongoing basis and the ability to thoroughly analyze that data are crucial in keeping costs low and quality high.
This is Part Three of a three-part tutorial.
Part One defined the entry of small vendors into federal contracts.
Part Two discussed dealing with federal contract requirements.
Service Parts Management
The need for better service parts management is finally gaining top-level management attention in many A&D companies since excessive carrying costs and obsolescence losses are being recognized as an unexploited opportunity for savings and a better bottom-line performance.
The situation becomes even more complicated with rotable parts, such as interchangeable elements of an aircraft that are removed, rebuilt, or reinstalled, almost as a rule always on a different aircraft. In this industry where every nut and bolt is important for safe operation, it takes an immense attention and effort to track interchangeable components and subassemblies for costing, replacement scheduling, and time-to-failure prediction. A&D companies design low-volume, high-cost products for high reliability, but still maintain stocks of complex and expensive spares, since in this industry, the impact of any failure is large and requires adequate stocks of parts at several locations for rapid replacement in case of repair. On one hand, minimizing the number of new parts introduced into the market (and subsequently into inventory) should be a major aim, particularly as parts face obsolescence from new product introductions, but, on the other hand, rotable parts and harvesting repaired components only add to the complexity and efficiency of this process.
Lot and serial tracking capabilities, the so-called tail effectivity, permits users to tie every part (within part lists and diagrams) on a plane back to that one entity. Serial number (tail) effectivity for the aircraft and aerospace industry is enabled since within the astute ERP system, a table should carry information on each serial or tail number for each item used, including the original date the serial or tail number was added, received, or stocked, as well as item information, such as the original vendor lot number, inventory quantities, weighted average costs, and the last inventory adjustment date.
The MRO companies also have very stringent requirements they must meet regarding tracking parts and condition codes. This functionality allows for demand by item condition to be matched against inventory by item condition, and it also allows for inventory management and MRP-based supply planning by condition code. While these functionalities may sound ordinary and appear to be offered by many vendors as supported' when responding to requests for information (RFI), subsequent product demonstration often reveals the need for some tweaking or even for a major modification in order to satisfy stringent customer requirements. The devil is always in details.
For a detailed discussion see MRO and Spare Parts Management Considerations.
Challenges
Incidentally, while the decision of some and not necessarily all large vendors to embrace the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development environment is prudent given a majority of their existing customers on UNIX and Oracle platforms, the conundrum for these vendors might be the fact that the vast majority of their new and prospective customers are the companies that have less than $200 million (USD) in revenues and with a likely preference for Microsoft-centric technologies and who might not be too excited about a seemingly more complex J2EE environment. At the same time, the need to technologically modernize the product and concurrently provide smooth migrations to existing customers, while investing lots of research and development (R&D) funds in functional enhancements as to be ahead (or at least abreast) of the pack will be a significant challenge for a smaller vendor.
source
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/federal-contract-management-and-vendors-readiness-part-three-meeting-federal-requirements-17725/
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