Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition provides full ERP capabilities for custom manufacturers centered on a "casual" bill-of-material for making complex products, while continuing with design and engineering activity. Active product support and enhancement deliver the capabilities and technologies that customers want and need in their specific industries, including ERP, BI, CRM, APS, MES and configuration from one supplier.

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition has a 20-year history of helping companies achieve and sustain productive operations, satisfied customers, and profitable results through technology and services.

Video Overview

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software and services are matched closely with specific customer needs, incorporating deep industry knowledge and experience. Plus, they are continually enhanced to meet evolving customer requests and suggestions. Notable for ease-of-use, fast navigation, tailored views and tight security, Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition applications deliver the functionality without the fuss, solid applications that make user's jobs easier, not more cumbersome.

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software products are designed to bring the entire company together by offering broad application coverage that allows all departments to use the system effectively, including management, sales, engineering, purchasing, operations, manufacturing, quality, customer service, finance, accounting, and human resources.

Product Development

Aptean focuses 100% of the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition product development efforts on the needs of our customers. We listen closely to customer input and offer multiple forums for providing input on product development including:

• Best practices for product definition
• Access to our Expert support site to directly request changes and/or enhancements
• Beta testing opportunities
• Participation in user group meetings with Made2Manage product experts

Aptean invests R&D on product enhancements to address the needs of our engineering and enterprise resource planning customers. Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software is designed solely for the unique requirements of the manufacturing industry.

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software products are released after stringent quality metrics have been achieved. At Aptean, delivering a quality product with robust functionality that meets our customers' needs takes priority over meeting an arbitrary target release date.

Since product development decisions are not governed by the needs of the sales team, we are not under the same pressures as other software vendors that may rush applications to market and sacrifice quality in the process. We take the time to fully scope out customer requirements, build deep functionality, and thoroughly beta test our products, to ensure Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition customers receive reliable software.

Ideal for Discrete Manufacturers

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition, an Aptean ERP solution, is the leading ERP software system for discrete manufacturers with engineer-to-order, make-to-order, make-to-stock, assemble-to-order, and mixed-mode discrete manufacturing operations. Made2Manage ERP enables our customers to achieve continuous business process improvements while optimizing operational efficiencies, managing business growth, increasing customer satisfaction, and improving financial performance.

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software system is an easy-to-use, high-quality solution that enables small and midsize manufacturers to manage all of their business operations, from quote to cash. The fully integrated Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software system, built on the Microsoft technology platform, enables manufacturers in such industries as industrial machinery, fabricated metal, electronics, medical devices, transportation, and general manufacturing to gain a competitive advantage while increasing overall profitability.

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence

As part of the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition solution, the M2M BI applications deliver powerful data analysis tools, performance notifications and rapid access to key operational parameters that you need to improve the performance of your business. With M2M BI, you get the right information, at the right time.

Monitoring Metrics

What would you like to know about your business? Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition applications help you uncover the answers to key business performance questions by enabling you to configure your system so you can focus on just the key business metrics you wish to monitor. You can access reports on all areas of your business quickly and easily get answers to questions like:

• What are the sales numbers for the quarter?
• What are the sales numbers by region and sales rep?
• How much is it costing us to produce each job?
• Which products are most profitable?

Events and Actions

With the Events and Actions (EA) tool, you can define, monitor and control a wide variety of production scenarios. For example, you can automatically be notified when inventory drops below safety stock, when changes occur to designated fields anywhere in the system or when there are shortages in material received for producing jobs. You can define these business events with priorities of green, yellow or red and a stoplight icon flashes when the event has occurred. The M2M BI EA tool allows you to:

• Manage by exception.
• Improve interdepartmental communication.
• Monitor any business metric.
• Display defined events and monitor your priorities with the alert central panel.

Exploring Operations

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Enterprise Explorer in M2M BI is a window into all that's happening in your enterprise. It lets you quickly identify the challenges you face today and anticipate possible future obstacles to your business success.

When a problem arises, you can drill right into the supporting documents to analyze the root cause. The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Enterprise Explorer enables you to:

• Gain early visibility into trouble spots in your operations.
• Customize your system for viewing only the data that is important to you.
• Find information quickly with just a few mouse clicks.
• Manage by exception.

Creating Reports

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Reporter lets you create custom reports based on the criteria you choose to review. Best of all, you don't need any programming skills to craft reports. With Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition's wizard-style interface, building reports is easy.

Reports are even available via the Internet. The M2M BI Reporter application enables you to craft or select any kind of report you require. You can:

• Generate the reports you need, quickly and easily, from the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System.
• Empower employees at all levels of your organization.
• Automate the report creation process while retaining control over output formats.
• Extract critical information based on the unique needs of your organization. M2M FastForms

You can extend the capabilities of your Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition ERP back office to meet your specific business processes without disrupting the availability of your system or calling Made2Manage each time a modification is needed. In addition, you can avoid the cost of paying for technical resources to implement baseline changes.

With innovative tools like Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition FastForms, you can immediately make the basic modifications you require to get the most out of your system investment without the hassles associated with hiring technical consultants. With M2M FastForms, you can tailor your Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition ERP system to work the way you do.

• Extend the capabilities of the forms within your M2M ERP system.
• Tailor your forms to your unique and changing business requirements.
• Reduce the costs commonly associated with form modifications.
• Make changes easily without requiring specialized IT skills.
• Implement form modifications more rapidly.

M2M Business Collaboration

As part of the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition solution, M2M Business Collaboration is defined as communicating with your supply chain constituents beyond the four walls of your manufacturing organization to reduce costs and speed time to market. Communication can take place person-to-person via a user interface or system-to-system via direct data transfer. Whether you are a small or large manufacturer, these enterprise communication tools can help you control costs and gain a competitive edge.

M2M CRM

As part of the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition solution, the M2M CRM software module provides you with the tools you need to put the customer first. M2M CRM applications help marketing, sales and support work together to generate more qualified prospects, carefully manage your selling opportunities, and provide responsive support.

Marketing

With M2M CRM marketing applications, you can create and capture new business opportunities by designing and executing effective marketing initiatives at the right times. You can use M2M CRM tools to analyze your customer and prospect base, target the best prospects, then create and manage effective marketing campaigns. M2M CRM marketing tools can help you:

• Capture new customers and drive repeat business.
• Mine your customer and prospect lists to find the best targets for your campaign.
• Map your campaign, determine which marketing tools to use, roll in budgets and schedule follow-up tasks.
• Track responses, gauge successful campaigns, and measure return on investment.

Opportunity Management

The M2M Sales Center helps keep your sales reps connected to the critical order status and account information they need to assist. With M2M Sales Center, your sales team can gain visibility into key back-office data, from any location at any time, to provide more responsive customer service. What's more, M2M Sales Center is designed specifically for small and midsize manufacturers like you so it's easy to use, inexpensive to own and requires no messy integrations of data migrations. With M2M Sales Center, you can:

• Access real-time customer account and order status data from any location.
• Gain enhanced visibility into the sales pipeline to assess and track opportunities.
• Filter opportunities by account, most recent activity, close date, potential revenue, and more.
• Integrate with Microsoft Outlook to manage contacts, accounts and tasks.

Sales Forecasting

M2M CRM applications can assess all of your sales opportunities and provide you with greater visibility. You have the flexibility to evaluate opportunities at every point in the sales cycle, value each opportunity, determine prospects' time frame for purchase and identify budgets in place for acquiring your product. Using M2M CRM, you can forecast and analyze your sales opportunities by:

• Managing complex, low-volume sales cycles.
• Measuring your sales results against forecasts.
• Refining and analyzing sales data by account manager, region or probability of close.

M2M Advanced Configurator

The M2M Advanced Configurator provides make-to-order (MTO) and engineer-to-order (ETO) companies the power to handle the most complex configurations. Through the use of eye-catching graphics, M2M Advanced Configurator provides users at any level the ability to easily create rules, formulas and custom input screens to simplify the configuration entry process.

M2M Advanced Configurator is quick to implement and easy to maintain. Through its straightforward web-based interface, it is easy to support complex product configurations and does not require any programming experience or on-going consulting support. The M2M Advanced Configurator product suite supports the creation of custom bills of materials and routings "on the fly" complex pricing mechanisms, and entering orders and quotes over the web.

With the M2M Advanced Configurator core product suite, you can:

• Improve order entry and production accuracy for even the most complex orders.
• Significantly reduce lead times and cost of sales.
• Provide a competitive advantage that translates directly into a higher order win percentage.
• Improve profit margins by reducing/eliminating non-value added activities.

M2M Advanced Configurator - Optional Modules

The M2M Advanced Configurator core suite can be enhanced with the following optional modules:

• M2M AC-Publish: Create custom sales proposal and quote documents using configured data.
• M2M AC-Remote: Submit configurations remotely while disconnected from the Internet and synchronize upon connection.
• M2M AC-System: Define global parameters to be applied to individual configurations (or, configurations within configurations).
• M2M AC-Vue: Use both viewing and mark-up capabilities to add notes, changes, and instructions to CAD and engineering drawings.
• M2M AC-Quote: Extends the core Made2Manage Enterprise Business System quoting functionality.

Customer Support

M2M CRM gives you powerful tools for servicing customers after the sale. Whether the customer received the wrong item, incorrect specifications or the product simply quit working, you can now easily enter and monitor all of these customer-related issues. The M2M CRM customer service features give you the ability to:

• Create tickets for support, assign case management, document actions, reference service histories and response procedures.
• Drill straight into sales order parts and vendor information so you can promptly assist your customers.
• Upsell your customers with additional products and services.
• Reduce support costs by letting customers find their own solutions online.

Field Service

The M2M CRM Field Service module will help you surpass the expectations of your customers for delivering off-site installation, repair and service for products covered by service contracts or warranties. Providing off-site service for your products does not have to be difficult to manage. The M2M CRM Field Service module enables you to:

• Maintain a full service history of your products as maintained or configured over the years.
• Manage scheduled preventative maintenance tasks.
• Access integrated field service data within inventory, lot control, BOMs and routings.
• Provide machine or equipment specific information for your customers on the Web.
• Monitor service costs by tracking service call costs.

M2M ERP

As part of the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition software system, the M2M ERP software module is a reliable, flexible and easy-to-use back-office platform that captures your data in one centralized system. By integrating your production processes into one database, M2M ERP software can execute all facets of your operations and provide you with the optimal ERP solution. M2M ERP allows you to automate all of your manufacturing processes, streamline operations, and be more responsive to your customers.

M2M ERP software administers your customer order management, materials management, production management, and financial management processes so you stay on track with your business objectives. With the M2M ERP software module, whether you are a make-to-order, make-to-stock, engineer-to-order, assemble-to-order, or mixed-mode manufacturer, you can gain real-time visibility over all of your back-office functions.

Customer Order Management

With the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition (M2M ERP) application, managing customer orders has never been easier. Whether you need to quickly generate an accurate quote, create a sales order, custom-configure products at the point of sale, or assign special pricing arrangements, you can provide responsive service to your customers. Plus, the imbedded Capable to Promise functionality within the M2M ERP sales order screen can help you calculate accurate delivery dates for your customers based on capacity and material constraints--helping you more reliably meet your customers' expectations.

In addition, the seamless flow of data within the M2M ERP system facilitates the fulfillment process. Orders flow directly into purchasing, inventory, and shipping to trigger key production operations.

Sales Order Management

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition offers several options for entering sales orders into your system. Sales orders may be generated from:

• Initial information
• Associated quotes
• Job orders
• Previous sales orders

Once you enter and confirm a sales order, a job order is created. M2M ERP helps you:

• Jumpstart the fulfillment process--a confirmed order can trigger purchasing, reserve inventory items needed for the order and create a job order.
• Ship orders with quantities different from the sales order by specifying an allowable range.
• Track partial or split shipments more effectively with the split shipment box.
• Gain flexibility by creating various ship dates and prices by checking the multiple release box.
• Manage the sales process through tight integration with the rest of the Made2Manage Enterprise Business System.

Quoting and Estimating

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition enables you to quickly and easily generate estimates and quotes. You can derive quote data from an existing or past quote, sales order or job order. With M2M Product Configurator, you can configure a custom product and automatically generate a quotation from the item. You have the flexibility to import quote information from your favorite estimating package or to create quotes for non-standard items on the fly. Each quote can include hundreds of line items, all with different quantities and pricing discounts. Your ability to manipulate quotes and estimates will allow you to:

• Respond rapidly to customer pricing inquiries.
• Create reliable estimates by linking to bills of material, routings, M2M Product Configurator and the Price Summary worksheet.
• Identify hot prospects with full reporting capabilities.
• Secure targeted gross profit margins.
• Assign unique pricing schedules associated with given parts, customers or groups of customers.

Materials Management

Inventory Control

Inventory control in M2M ERP is designed to manage all your inventory-related transactions. You can identify and track information for each standard part within the item master. With real-time visibility into your parts, you can make more accurate inventory management decisions. The item master is your information source for generating bills of material, routings, production schedules and other application areas throughout the Made2Manage ERP. M2M ERP will assist your inventory control efforts by enabling you to:

• Reduce costs through efficient inventory management.
• Organize important information about each part for easy access.
• Generate a detailed material availability report so you can view critical inventory information and make better inventory management decisions.
• Perform everyday inventory transactions--including scraps, transfers, movements and more.
• Provide fast access to related information without having to retype anything.

Material Lot Control

Lot control within M2M ERP makes it easy to track part identification information. Lot control gives you automatic tracking of raw materials, sub-assemblies and final assemblies to their origins. You can track parts throughout production and quickly identify where each lot-controlled item was used, as well as determine what lots were used in developing the end product. M2M ERP simplifies lot control by helping you:

• Simplify the process of tracking parts throughout production.
• Provide control over lot size down to lots of one (when you need serial numbers).
• Identify materials with lot controls on purchase orders and shipping orders.
• Assign expiration dates to material that has a limited shelf life.

Shop Floor Data Collection

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Shop Floor Data Collection device automates the entry of your daily labor, inventory, and shipping and receiving transactions and improves the accuracy of your data. Users can choose between hardwired or radio frequency wireless connectivity options to capture key enterprise data. The Shop Floor Data Collection device also supports a wide variety of data terminals.

By swiping a bar code wand over the bar codes you print out, your labor, inventory, shipping and receiving data get updated automatically. Bar codes print automatically on part number labels, pick lists, purchase orders, shipping lists, physical inventory reports and even employee name badges. You can:

• Improve data accuracy and save time by eliminating manual data entry into your M2M ERP system.
• Decrease shipping errors by ensuring the right quantities of the right products are loaded for shipment.
• Strengthen detailed labor collection.
• Reduce your carrying costs by having a real-time picture of inventory levels.

Multi-Dimensional Inventory

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Multi-Dimensional Inventory (MDI) feature provides measurement of inventory in multiple dimensions. With MDI, you can specify component requirements in multiple dimensions and capture inventory transactions in alternate units of measure. You can define units of measure to include units used to count or measure inventory (e.g., pieces, bars and/or sheets) or units used to quantify dimensions (e.g., feet or inches). The Made2Manage MDI feature gives precision to your inventory by allowing you to:

• Predefine valid units of measure independent of individual parts. Count or measure inventory in up to five dimensions.
• Specify component requirements in multiple dimensions.
• Capture inventory transactions with an unlimited number of alternate units of measure.
• Review component quantities specified in multiple dimensions on the bill of material.
• Apply MDI to purchase orders as well as the issuance, receipt and return of materials.
• Transact in alternate units of measure with automatic conversion to the primary stock keeping or costing unit of measure.

Physical Inventory

Whether you keep your inventory accurate through cycle counting or through annual physical inventories, M2M ERP gives you the tools that make it easy to collect, reconcile and post count quantities against on-hand inventory balances and in turn generate needed general ledger transactions.

Cycle counting in M2M ERP allows you to set up pre-established rules for the frequency of and method for counting items. You can then print pre-populated cycle count worksheets for simple count collections and for easy count data entry. Inventory Movement reports are available to monitor transactions performed during the cycle count to ensure accurate reconciliation.

Physical Inventory is an annual event for most manufacturing companies, often taking place at the fiscal year end. This function is completely integrated within Made2Manage ERP and accommodates both complete (i.e., "wall-to-wall") and partial inventories. Using M2M ERP, you can "freeze" inventory, issue and control count tags, enter tags, analyze variances, post differences to the general ledger and update on-hand quantities. You can continue to make transactions and receive warning messages; M2M ERP accommodates both inventory management techniques so your company has the flexibility to choose. M2M ERP keeps an accurate account of your physical inventory, permitting you to:

• Automate many tedious tasks--everything but the counting itself.
• Set up pre-established rules for the frequency of and method for counting.
• Provide inventory movement reports so you can accurately reconcile variances during cycle counts.
• Automatically update on-hand quantities and general ledger accounts.

Production Management

Production Management software applications within M2M ERP allow you to manufacture your products profitably. From creating job orders, production monitoring, managing bills of material, and shipping control; the M2M ERP Production Management software solution helps you to get the job done right, on time, and on budget. Take a closer look at all the tools available to assist your production.

Job Orders

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition job order is a sophisticated tracking tool for both customer and internal orders that lets you manage job orders in a way that fits your process.

You can quickly and easily create job orders in many ways: from a sales order, from an existing job order, from a job order template or from scratch if you want. You can also create job orders using a master job order queue or by answering Material Requirements Planning (MRP) action messages. The job order functions offer you control and precision allowing you to:

• Manage job orders for simplified tracking of both internal and customer projects.
• Automate many tedious job-related tasks, freeing your people to handle more important issues.
• Practice full control over your production process.
• Create a job order automatically to drive material requirements.
• See cost variances at any time during the production process.
• Place stock manufactured components in the job order queue automatically when items have dropped below the safety stock level.

Order Costing

The order costing function accumulates and reports costs as they flow through the system. You can analyze costs from inventory, purchasing, receiving and job orders and transfer them to the general ledger. Costs from material transactions, including purchasing and receiving, are transferred to job orders and inventory. Order costing also records unplanned material and miscellaneous costs. With order costing you can:

• Monitor costs throughout the entire production process and identify opportunities for streamlining.
• Review full reports on job orders, sales orders, WIP, cost of goods sold and more.
• Generate subledger transactions automatically when inventory costs or costing methods change.

Monitoring Production

The job order screen gives you the ability to view job-costing information, including accumulated job order costs, as soon as labor is recorded or material is issued. With the ability to compare accumulated cost to the estimated job order cost and the estimated sales order cost, you can better monitor the efficiency of your production facility. With M2M ERP, you can monitor your production status by:

• Displaying all of your jobs' key indicators in one central location.
• Staying informed on what's happening in real time so you can respond quickly and effectively to changing demands.
• Organizing job information for review at the parent job order only or at all sub-assemblies associated with the project.
• Monitoring production progress, including the number of required and completed units at each work center, as well as scrapped units and reworked units at each operation.

Creating Routings

Routings sequentially list the work centers and operations needed to make the part. You can create standard routings for your standard parts, or create routings for non-standard parts as they are associated with quotations, sales orders or job orders. Maximize your routing procedures by:

• Accurately calculating labor and overhead costs.
• Building solid production schedules with M2M Advanced Scheduling.
• Displaying costs for labor, overhead, subcontract and other expenses for a quick, concise look at the total production cost.
• Monitoring costs and staying on schedule by tracking parts through the production cycle.
• Making it easy to create and maintain routings using an easy-to-learn interface.
• Keeping accurate costing information.

Bills of Material

M2M ERP simplifies the process of updating your bill of materials. Since bills of material (BOM) are used to generate quotations and sales orders, up-to-date information on the components and sub-contractors used to produce your product are essential. M2M ERP helps you to:

• Balance your lead times for different parts in your production process so resources can be allocated "just in time" when a component is needed.
• Trim inventory and avoid placing resources into components that are further out in the fulfillment process.
• Improve cash flow by maintaining less inventory and spending money in a timely manner.
• Build and maintain your BOM.
• Change BOM quickly and easily to replace or delete items.
• Capture and display all components with sub-assemblies at any level.
• Maintain reports that detail your product structures and enable you to find parts where they are being used.
• Ease the process of determining product costs.

Shipping and Receiving

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Shipping and Receiving functions help you easily manage all aspects of receiving materials, returning goods, shipping finished goods, and controlling subcontract work. M2M ERP improves shipping and receiving by allowing you to:

• Create shippers and receivers from the original sales order or purchase order without rekeying information.
• Ship items from multiple locations to ensure that accurate inventories are maintained.
• Maintain a complete audit trail of inbound and outbound materials.
• Recalculate the backorder quantity when the total quantity ordered is not received or shipped.

Notifying Employees, Customers and Suppliers

Keep your sales channel, customers and suppliers informed with the M2M Notifier feature. By using the Notifier workflow-enabling system, you can automatically send a message to customers, suppliers and employees when events happen that are important to them. The Notifier system works with quotations, purchase orders, job orders, sales orders, shippers, receivers and invoices.

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition notification features also enable you to monitor any business metric and track events based on your priorities. For instance, you can receive a "heads up" when a shipment goes out to a customer or when profit margins drop below a predetermined level on a sales order. In fact, you can flag any field in the system based on your needs. Made2Manage notification features enable you to:

• Enhance customer satisfaction by keeping customers in the loop as you fill their orders.
• Increase supplier confidence by informing them when you receive shipments and make payments.
• Keep your employees, customers and suppliers informed automatically as you make progress on job orders.
• Improve communication within your organization by alerting employees when important workflow events happen or when certain tasks should be performed.

Engineering Change Management

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Engineering Change Management (ECM) feature provides full auditing of critical documents and multiple revision levels for the item master, standard BOMs and routing records. ECM manages the engineering change process, supports proper change procedures and enables effective communication during the approval and implementation process. Utilize the Made2Manage ECM feature to:

• Ensure customer satisfaction, capture production efficiencies, and control costs.
• Create a process for efficiently managing engineering changes.
• Reduce errors by driving the clear communication of engineering changes throughout your organization.
• Share modifications to engineering change orders via broadcasts to employees, vendors and customers.
• Track planned or requested engineering changes through the use of electronic documents in the system.
• Create multiple revisions for an item and define access parameters.

Total Quality Management

Complying with the widely-established QS-9000 Quality System Requirements, which include Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and its obligatory Product Part Approval Process (PPAP), is a critical part of your manufacturing operation. These regulations necessitate millions of documents per year that you must create, revise, control and observe continuously.

In order to help your engineering, manufacturing and quality management teams comply with these international business standards, M2M ERP is fully integrated with Powerway, a comprehensive software solution that organizes and automates your manufacturing business's paper-intensive processes.

The Powerway Suite 2000 comprises 16 software modules and the Powerway Desktop command center. With Made2manage Systems and Powerway, you can benefit from the following solution sets:

Powerway Engineering Advantage--helps your engineering teams plan, design and produce quality products by allowing them to configure products according to APQP and PPAP standards, identify sub-standard problems early, reduce data entry, avoid late changes and streamline the documentation of the quality management process.

Powerway Document Control--gives you complete control over the quality management documents that are so critical to your operation, allowing you to edit and route documents electronically, control access to and versions of specific documents, and ensure that everyone is updated on the status of a document throughout its lifecycle.

Powerway Factory Floor Performance--enables process control, allowing manufacturers to statistically analyze production processes on the shop floor and reduce scrap, rework and process variation.

Powerway Quality Solutions--automate critical, labor-intensive business processes, including meeting customer requirements, complying with periodic, internal audits, regulating the gages that measure your products and processes, and proactively handling preventative action steps that have resulted from internal failures or customer complaints.

Financial Management

Accounts Payable

M2M ERP accounts payable keeps track of which suppliers you owe, how much you owe them, and when payments are due. You can even prioritize your suppliers based on negotiated terms and pay them accordingly. M2M ERP accounts payable helps you to:

• Pay your suppliers at just the right time.
• Scan a full set of reports for accounts payable performance analysis.
• Customize accounts payable to fit your unique business needs.
• Post new invoices to one or more shipments from a supplier and/or separate purchase order.

Accounts Receivable

M2M ERP accounts receivable automates much of the invoicing process by being tightly integrated with M2M ERP Sales and Production. After an order ships, the system queues accounts receivable to issue an invoice. M2M ERP automatically transfers information from the shipper and sales order to the invoice, saving you time by eliminating duplicate data entry tasks. M2M ERP accounts receivable allows you to:

• Automate the invoicing process so that you can stay on top of billing.
• Use full accounts receivable analysis tools for tracking and assessing revenue streams.
• Set up your invoices so they match the way you do business.
• Customize your invoices with important messages to your customers.

Bank Reconciliation

To assist you in managing your cash flow, M2M ERP includes the Bank Reconciliation feature, which gives you the ability to monitor all of your checking account transactions within the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition system.

To streamline your cash management operations, the Bank Reconciliation feature allows you to indicate "cleared" checks, create deposit records and clear deposits in the system.

In addition, you can easily reconcile the differences between cash accounts and bank statements for transactions appearing on the bank statement that have yet to be recorded in M2M ERP. The Bank Reconciliation feature gives you the ability to:

• Monitor all transactions within a checking account inside M2M ERP.
• Create, track and clear checking account deposits in the system.
• Track which checks have cleared your checking account.
• Reconcile bank statements and checking accounts with M2M ERP.

Budgeting - Cash Flow

Budgeting and forecasting cash inflow and outflow enables your managers to prepare forecasts and let you plan for future cash needs. M2M ERP helps you easily predict investment opportunities or future cash deficiencies, giving you the information you need to make critical business decisions. Greatly reduce the risk of bank overdrafts and last-minute loans with M2M ERP cash flow projection tools. M2M ERP helps manage your budget and cash flow, so that you can effectively:

• Budget based upon many different sources with flexible and configurable applications.
• Export to and import from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
• Select cash flow inputs and quickly adjust to output derivations, including existing data, actual averages, what-if values, weighted average and user-defined values.
• Choose from many reports, including a forecast template and line item calculations.
• Save multiple forecasts so you can compare current cash flows with past and future accounting periods.

General Ledger

The general ledger integrates monetary flow from every aspect of your business and controls financial activities. Information from the general ledger is linked to the accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll and order costing functions, which are sub-ledgers. Daily postings in these sub-ledgers can be made immediately or on a delayed basis. Since information is shared across all functional areas within Made2Manage ERP, you can significantly reduce manual journal entries. M2M ERP makes your general ledger accurate and precise by enabling you to:

• Easily close periods and keep your accounts up-to-date.
• Have full control over which transactions post automatically and which are posted manually.
• Distribute plant-wide expenses to departments or cost centers automatically.
• Plan budgets, account for sub-ledger transactions, and report on financials.
• Review transactions using more than a dozen reports.

Human Resources

Meet the daily challenges of managing employee relations, government mandates and the ever-changing benefit options with confidence and efficiency.

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition has partnered with Sage Software to bring you Sage Abra HR, the heart of the totally-integrated Sage Abra HRMS solution that puts you in complete control of HR management, benefits, administration, recruitment and payroll. Sage Abra HR can make it possible for you to:

• Manage all of your HR functions.
• Integrate your HR functions with M2M ERP and take advantage of employee information throughout your enterprise software.
• Use reporting and analysis tools that can be resources for strategic decision-making.
• Analyze salary information by organization levels.

Advanced Reporting

M2M Advanced Reporting suite is the industry-leading solution for enterprise report-writing and drill-down analysis, providing quick access to the necessary data you need to make critical business decisions. Easily create reports using both financial and operational data with complete drill-down to source document capability in any report.

Because of its simple point-and-click setup, writing reports has never been easier. No need to understand complex database tables or cryptic field names. Field names are translated into plain English and database tables are linked right out of the box. M2M Advanced Reporting uses the look and feel of a standard spreadsheet to make learning simple.

With the M2M Advanced Reporting suite, users can:

• Drill down to source documents in any report.
• Import budget data from Excel spreadsheets.
• Consolidate multi-company financials and perform multi-currency rollups easily.
• Create dashboards with multiple reports and graphs on one screen with full drill-drown capability from each graph.
• Package a group of reports together with simple point-and-click functionality.

Specifically, the M2M Advanced Reporting suite supports financial or operational report creation.

Financial Reporting--Allows users to easily create any type of financial report with simple point-and-click procedures, while requiring no additional formulas or IT assistance to retrieve data from the General Ledger.

From a financial reporting perspective, M2M Advanced Reporting has the following features:

• Effortless report template creation
• Double-click balance source
• Advanced security
• Painless consolidations
• Straightforward business intelligence Dashboards and reports
• Seamless spreadsheet connection

Operational Reporting--Retrieves data from multiple tables and makes them intelligible, thus allowing users to produce the necessary operational reports just as easily as creating a standard spreadsheet.

From an operational reporting perspective, M2M Advanced Reporting has the following features:

• Easy report creation
• Detailed reports
• Business intelligence reports
• Dynamic data analysis
• Dashboards and report packets
• Drilldown details

Time & Attendance

M2M Time and Attendance provides a flexible, efficient and user-friendly workforce management solution to help control your labor data. Fully integrated with M2M Shop Floor Data Collection, this system automates the collection, calculation and preparation of payroll data. This reduces the opportunities for error that can occur in a traditional paper-based time keeping system, and increases the efficiency of your operation.

M2M Time and Attendance can be implemented stand-alone or integrated with M2M Shop Floor Data Collection. It is an open solution that can work with most scanners and controllers. This can eliminate the need for expensive proprietary hardware and allows you to use existing M2M Shop Floor Data Collection devices.

Eliminate double entry, avoid mistakes and reduce time spent keying-in data, all while increasing your labor productivity and your bottom line. M2M Time and Attendance includes interfaces to the most popular payroll packages - Abra, ADP, Ceridian and Paychex. This allows easy export capability to your current payroll software.

• Reduce payroll processing time by automating the collection, calculation and preparation of payroll data across multiple locations
• Reduce the likelihood for errors
• Manage complex payroll formulas and rules with ease
• Achieve high cost effectiveness by leveraging existing hardware

Progress Billing

To manage the billing process for larger capital equipment jobs and/or projects with longer lead times, M2M ERP offers progress billing. With progress billing, you can divide a bill into separate increments and still be able to track the whole process, report and invoice. In addition, the progress billing feature allows you to:

• Generate needed cash flow without having to recognize revenue or perform work-arounds within the normal billing system.
• Choose how to bill customers based on periodic schedules, time and material usage or percentage complete.
• Select between unearned revenue and revenue accounts, based on company requirements.
• Indicate on a sales order which items will require progress billing.
• Process invoices as either earned or unearned revenue based on your accounting practices.

M2M Supply Chain Management

M2M SCM offers flexible forecasting, planning, scheduling and execution tools that will maximize your unique production environment. You can use any or all of these tools in any combination of finite/infinite planning and scheduling, depending on your unique environment.

To help you synchronize your entire operation, M2M SCM employs a memory-resident application server known as the M2M Synchronizer Foundation. The M2M Synchronizer Foundation simultaneously shares data from your back office (M2M ERP) and the M2M SCM planning and scheduling applications. As a result, you have the real-time information you need to make the best production decisions for your operation.

Demand Forecasting

Assessing your product demand is critical for capacity planning, purchasing and inventory management. You may rely on historical performance and trends to make future demand assumptions. Yet, storing, reporting and analyzing meaningful data can be complex and time consuming. Too often, key decisions are made on instinct alone.

To gain a quick and accurate forecast for finished goods, key sub-assemblies and parts, Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Demand Forecasting takes advantage of the sales data within M2M ERP and a powerful statistic engine to help you make better decisions about your medium-term production plans, long-term capacity plans, purchasing relationships and inventory management.

With M2M Demand Forecasting, you have the ability to:

• Share forecast data between M2M ERP and M2M SCM planning applications.
• Forecast at the lowest level you want. You can also auto-select parts to forecast and indicate whether you want to forecast at a level below the part/revision.
• Calculate demand across multiple facilities.
• Access historical sales data by order date, ship date and issues of material to jobs.
• Create an unlimited number of forecasts or history versions.
• Power your forecasts using a robust, embedded statistical forecasting engine that automatically selects the best forecasting method for each part.
• Generate forecasts for tens or hundreds of thousands of parts within a few minutes.

Advanced Planning

Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition offers basic (infinite) as well as advanced planning software solutions to support your unique production environment. Made2Manage's infinite planning tools are ideally suited to small and midsize manufacturers that generally are not constrained by capacity or material availability. By contrast, the Made2Manage Advanced Planning software tool, M2M Advanced Planning, is designed for more complex manufacturing environments where material and capacity constraints have a large impact on production operations.

Whether you require infinite or finite planning applications, you can quickly respond to changing forecasts and heavier sales volumes with the appropriate job orders to keep production and purchasing moving forward.

The Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Advanced Planning supply chain management application helps companies with capacity constraints, significant make-to-stock manufacturing, seasonal demand and/or long lead times drive throughput. With the Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Made2Manage Edition Advanced Planning software application, manufacturers enjoy all the capabilities of the M2M Planning tool and more. M2M Advanced Planning also accounts for capacity and material availability when creating and modifying jobs, helping you prioritize jobs when total demand exceeds total capacity.

With M2M Advanced Planning you can:

• Balance demand forecasts, sales orders and safety stock needs against capacity and material constraints.
• Use Theory of Constraints methodology to determine the highest throughput, or most profitable plan, when total demand exceeds total capacity.
• Automate production planning with no scheduling simulations or human interaction required.

Capable to Promise

To win and keep the confidence of your customers over time, you strive to successfully manage their expectations from the outset. To avoid "over promising" and "under promising" on job orders, you have to set your delivery dates based on available capacity and material constraints. M2M SCM helps you keep your promises. The M2M SCM Capable to Promise feature makes it easy for your order takers to quickly and accurately determine whether you can meet your customer's requested delivery dates. If a requested date can not be met, the Capable to Promise application can determine the earliest realistic date a product can be promised and offers alternate delivery options such as split orders. The M2M SCM Capable to Promise feature helps you to:

• Provide realistic product delivery dates based on actual and planned material availability, current production capacity and vendor lead times.
• Improve customer service.
• Keep product sales in line with the capacity of your bottleneck resources.
• Evaluate options for expediting materials or adding capacity to meet a requested date.
• Propose alternate delivery options when you cannot meet the customer's requested date.

Advanced Scheduling

M2M Advanced Scheduling helps you quickly schedule and sequence all activities in your work centers so you can hit your targeted delivery dates. M2M Advanced Scheduling combines Theory of Constraints methods and powerful optimization technology to help you achieve maximum shop throughput. You also get an easy-to-use, drag and drop Gantt chart facility that sets new standards for viewing and editing your schedules to help you meet your commitments.

M2M Advanced Scheduling enables you to:

• Prioritize, sequence and schedule job operations in one step across work centers within capacity and material constraints.
• Perform scheduling and rescheduling runs fast. Large scheduling runs can be performed in five minutes or less.
• Maximize throughput by buffering constraints, assemblies and shipping.
• Manage additional resources such as labor crews or tooling.
• Minimize late jobs and achieve planned job due dates.