One for the Little Guy

This article focuses on engineers at an organization that may rely on its product lifecycle management software to speed a product to market. The system gives engineers a way to talk among themselves over a network as they work out product details and hash over design changes. Equally important to a fast-paced manufacturer is an enterprise resource planning system, which manages the operational, planning, and control side of the organization. As costs come down, smaller companies, often the suppliers to the big ones, are also finding it worthwhile to undergo the expense and transition to install enterprise management software and to wed their engineering and manufacturing systems. Manufacturers can usually expect installations of extensive systems to cost a sizable portion of their information technology budgets. An enterprise planning system can be time-consuming to implement and the training period long. Following a two-year company-wide evaluation, Anchor Lamina executives decided to re-engineer front-end processes. They specifically sought estimating, computer-aided manufacturing, and design technology that could be easily integrated with the company’s ERP system.