Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for Aerospace and Defense 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing

Aerospace ERP must have traceability

Traceability

• The most commonly promoted functional area for aerospace ERP systems is traceability. This regulation is not extraordinary as one might think—many medical device and electronics manufacturers have identical trace requirements.
• Having “cradle to grave” traceability for both lot and serialized items is one of the most significant elements of a high-performing aerospace ERP system. Why? Initially, it’s a regulation by aviation regulatory agencies and several aerospace clients have to verify their ERP system properly addresses this during clients' audits.
• Having traceability is furthermore crucial for aeronautical finished goods because all elements need to be examined if there’s a mechanical fault. That comprises the source of the component, the component’s lot or serial number, and all crafts that comprise those elements (in the event of a recall).

Documentation

• The aerospace ERP software has to trace the incoming material and correlated vendor documentation. All material movements of that lot or serialized component have to be apprehended in the ERP system, whether via manual entries or material barcoding transactions. A reasonable aerospace ERP system will have a document management method to support attributing pertinent documents for items such as materials from arrival to shipping.
• For finished goods, your aerospace ERP should include all lot and serialized elements, the associated work order, and those who executed work during that work order. The ERP system must have the capacity to record these transactions.

Auditability

• Also, the ERP should give a comprehensive audit trail to verify compliance. Businesses with this data in silos and an unintegrated ERP system—transactions documented by hand on paper, and then joined into Excel spreadsheets or Access databases—will face challenges. Non-integrated transactional capture can happen in data entry mistakes, lost transactions, and problems with non-real-time data. There may be events where urgent trace data can’t be accelerated due to having to search through non-integrated manual systems to discover and link the information jointly.
• Commonly, quality and vendor audits are difficult for organizations not using integrated and aerospace-centric ERP systems. Utilizing systems that aren’t built for the aerospace industry can not only be valuable and time-consuming but can moreover cause lost business and hinder new business expansion.
• Aerospace ERP systems should rapidly and easily provide visibility of where lot and serialized elements were utilized, including supply parts, sub-assemblies, work orders, projects, shipment objectives, and clients. The easiest way to legislate audits is to have a powerful lot/serial Trace module in your aerospace ERP.

There’s more required than just traceability

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing

1) Understanding

• Finance: A/R, A/P, G/L, financial reporting, and products costing
• Logistics: Purchasing and sales
• Inventory control: Raw materials, completed goods, bulk stock, and materials resource planning (MRP)
• Production control: Material problems and receipts, production completion, labor capture, and planning

2) Expertise

• Manufacturing throughput
• Material shortages / substitutions
• Material scrap
• Production scrap
• Excess and obsolete inventories
• Labor and machine utilization
• On-time delivery to clients
• Machine downtime

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