Apollo ERP X for the Automotive Manufacturing Industry
With new manufacturing methods, new materials and the demand for increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles, not to mention a whole new category of demand for electric vehicles, the automotive industry is constantly experiencing massive upheaval.
It’s amidst this environment of rapid change that the Apollo ERP X platform has succeeded and continues to evolve alongside the automotive industry to provide all the mission critical modules and tools to serve the unique challenges of the automotive manufacturing industry. With dozens of clients in this manufacturing sector, and born of German heritage, home to the world’s most robust automotive manufacturing industry, our ERP software was developed in the crucible of the stringent and complex requirements that only the Automotive industry requires.
Whether you’re manufacturing complete vehicles, manufactured parts, electronics, testing systems, engines, or interior components, Apollo ERP X can help with the unique challenges of your complex automotive manufacturing environment.
The Unique Challenges for the Automotive Manufacturing Industry
As an automotive manufacturer and supplier one of the most common challenges your company faces is intense competitive and pricing pressure. Add in the requirements for maintaining a system with EDI, perfect quality control, AQL management as well as need to remain connected with your customers, partners, and suppliers and this all adds up to a uniquely difficult environment in which to manufacture quickly, accurately and profitably!
With downwards pressure from end-customers demanding more and more from their vehicles, you clients in turn are requiring automotive manufacturers to shorten their innovation cycles, complete more complex production processes faster than ever all the while conforming to increasing legal requirements.
Given this challenging context, Apollo ERP X has evolved to meet a multitude of growing obstacles that automotive manufacturers of all sizes deal with every day. Here’s just a sampling of these challenges:
- Management of tools supporting ISO 9001 and TS16949 standards
- EDI (electronic data interchange) for customers and suppliers
- Management of a Warehouse Management System (WMS) with detailed per-contract and per-customer labeling capabilities including administration of complex shipping document requirements.
- Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
- Unpredictability of material availability
- Understanding customer demand
- Volatile raw material costs
- Ability to perform CALL-OFF orders based on number of items, value of items, item groupings or based on business intelligence gleamed from estimates of historical data.
- Complex Bill of Materials (BOM) including support for multi-level BOM’s that reflect critical interdependencies.
- Quality Control management including APQP/PPAP
- AQL – Acquired Quality Levels management – suppliers gain different quality control levels depending on any set of pre-determined measurable including quality, speed-of-deliverability, cost, defect rate, etc.
- Control of waste and by-products
- Need to reduce overcapacity and associated costs Lower production setup times
- Improve work cycle times
- Elimination of duplicate data entry and expensive integrations between disparate systems
- Low capacity utilization
- Complex versioning and variations of products
- Automatic and up-to-date currency conversion
- Support for 8Ds problem solving report templates.
- Management of preventative maintenance schedules
- Integrating OEM certifications into the production process
- Support for TPS – software tools for implementation of lean manufacturing principles including value stream mapping, Kaizen, Kanban & Heijunka
- Complex unit conversion including various dimensional and volumetric measurements that require final unit calculations
- Variability in methods and tolerances of expansive materials
- Production schedules that must meet those of customer needs
- Demand planning and forecasting
- Response times to changing product mix and changing customer specifications
- Optimizing capacity
- Paperwork related to importing and exporting of materials in different currencies and languages.
- Customer specific BOM with rapid calculation
- Capacity bottleneck resolution
- Tracking of material
- Group capacity planning for machines that are customer specific
- Machine and Group Machine planning
- Lot and Batch tracking and full traceability
- Customer specific order management that can include different requirements for paperwork including custom labeling
- External work cycles (managing 3rd party manufacturing as part of the overall manufacturing process and production planning)
- Manipulation of work order priorities and deliveries
- Identifying material and equipment conflicts
- Balancing work cycles on production lines to minimize idle time, reduce setup time and use operators and secondary equipment efficiently
- The ability to react quickly to machine downtime and dynamically change entire production and machine schedules
- Compliance with local, state and country laws around environmental laws and regulations
How Apollo ERP X Software Meets and Exceeds the Demands of the Automotive Manufacturing Industry
Apollo ERP X has been designed from the ground-up with the needs of automotive manufacturers in mind. That’s why it handle all of the above demands with ease while seamlessly bringing together information from your entire organization together in one place.
Additionally, Apollo ERP X includes a wide variety of integrated modules to help you run your manufacturing business. This include modules for CRM, Inventory / Warehouse Management, Purchasing, Quality Assurance, Logistics, Project Management, Service, Business Intelligence and a dedicated Mobile application for maximum portability and efficiency within your manufacturing environment.
While Apollo does not have a stand-alone accounting module included, we provide a software bridge to most standard accounting packages that allows for the seamless exchange of crucial financial data between Apollo ERP X and your current accounting software solution.
Our approach to ERP software is unique. We understand that each of our clients, even within a specific industry like automotive manufacturing is still different, with a unique set of workflows. That’s why through the course of getting to know your particular manufacturing environment we perform a deep and thorough needs analysis with your team. In some circumstances our ERP specialists discover that your specific manufacturing workflow requires specialized functionality. In this case our team of developers can recommend and provide the necessary customizations to the Apollo ERP X platform to accommodate your specific needs.
The Return on Investment with Apollo ERP X
An investment in any ERP software platform should see an almost immediate quantifiable result. This ROI is readily seen in areas such as revenue growth, improved productivity, decreased machine and operator idle times as well as improved product quality, production flexibility, and profitability.
The Benefits of Apollo ERP X as your Automotive Manufacturing Management Software
With Apollo ERP X as your solution, your automotive manufacturing and processing business should expect to see gains in a wide variety of critical areas including:
- The ability to be more responsive to changing market and customer demands
- The ability to take on more complex orders, and offer innovative solutions and products
- Manage maintenance for all your machines, molds, and equipment
- Higher product quality
- Improved efficiencies across all aspects of your business
- Improved costing and forecasting of production runs
- Higher on-time deliveries
- Lower idle times across all of your available resources
- Real-time dashboards to monitor every aspect of the production process
- Shorter production cycle times
- Reduce inventory costs
- Increase aftermarket order fill rates without additional inventory
- Increased customer satisfaction and retention
- Improved overall production output from existing production assets, without investing more money
- Lower recalls and warranty expenses
- Connecting the shop floor with the top floor for actionable information
A Selection of our Automotive Manufacturing Clients
AK FEINROHR is a German producer of high-grade stainless steel pipes & tubes for the automotive industry.
SCHMID DONZDORF, a leading producer of custom made gasoline & diesel tank systems for companies such as John Deere, Volvo, AMG and Porsche.