MXP

Over 25 years ago, an entrepreneurial network of operations and software experts envisioned a business management system that would deliver the right combination of reliability, efficiency and low cost for the mid-market enterprise. After thousands of hours of design, programming and customer input, developers were able to execute one of the most durable, functional and flexible ERP systems ever deployed. The platform consisted of rock solid modules for finance, distribution, manufacturing and service management. Today, bringing the same innovation to market, the system has evolved into MXP-Decade, a high-performance ERP with a focus on business solutions that meet real customer needs.

MXP-Decade is a full-featured ERP system that delivers a strong building block approach to implementation and allows companies to start with the basics and add functionality as needed. Since MXP is ready ‘out of the box’ to configure, organizations in the distribution, make-to-order/make-to-stock manufacturing, and/or equipment repair and maintenance sectors can quickly implement an ERP platform to fulfill their most pressing business issues.

Feature advances in MXP-Decade technology make it unbeatable in its class:

• Explorer-style navigation lets users be more productive, easily locating data and executing tasks
• Customizable system menus (by company, group or individual) promote user efficiency
• System dashboards provide access to consolidated information quickly and effectively
• Integrated inquiries and maintenance functions make locating and manipulating business data seamless
• External document links associate any external files with individual records; create a portfolio of reference information about items, customers, etc. inside the system
• Spreadsheet integration allows users to filter and sort data, then output the results to Microsoft Excel
• fsInstaller process simplifies installation processing, including upgrade and patch applications
• Dynamic updates notify users when new system versions are available and allow interactive downloads
• SMOF (Simultaneous Multiple Open Functions) technology allows users to execute up to 99 functions in a single Windows session, using a single MXP client access license (CAL)
• Progress-based ADM2 design protocols prevent record locking issues, ensuring constant data integrity

Foresight’s commitment to customer success led the company to partner with other software developers to expand MXP-Decade’s functionality outside the traditional ERP environment. The community of industry leaders provides Foresight’s customers with the capability to:

• Create a web-based B2B or B2C storefront with BravePoint’s ERPxTEND product
• Explore data using customized extraction and analytic tools with Corvu’s CorManufacturing suite
• Manage business process workflow with Moding Ltd’s BizDoc functionality
• Integrate MXP-Decade with other legacy applications using Progress’ Sonic Enterprise Application Bus

And the native MXP-Decade Service Management Suite (SMS) is unique in the industry giving organizations full control of after-the-sale customer support functions, including Contract Administration, Field/Depot Repair, and Help Desk management.

While Foresight is always working to enhance the MXP environment, we are sensitive to the needs of individual customers. The 25-year tradition of delivering application source code gives our user community the opportunity to completely customize their system to their unique need. And the fsInstaller technology prevents future updates from ‘stepping on’ customized processes, programs or data.

At Foresight, we maintain our commitment to excellence in our products and in our level of support and service to provide customers with matchless satisfaction.

Accounts Payable

Understand where your money is going, and turn that knowledge into lower costs. Accounts Payable manages complete vendor information, with vendor-level price tables and item-numbering schemes. Ensure that payment terms are met and have the knowledge at your fingertips to negotiate effectively with the vendor community.

Accounts Receivable

Know which customers are paying on time and which ones are generating the highest profits. Complete integration with our Distribution Suite ensures that transactions are never missed, and that complete visibility into the process of converting sales into cash is always available.

Bill of Material

Bill of Material (BOM) is the core component of Foresight’s Manufacturing system. It provides a consistent base of communication for all users, from engineering to purchasing to floor personnel to accounting. Because of its mission critical role, we have made Bill of Material extremely flexible and easy to use.

Bill of Material Management

• Allow different departments to use separate BOMs (e.g., prototype BOMs for engineering, costing BOMs for accounting)
• Create multilevel, single-level and open-ended BOMs to match your business need
• Define unlimited roll-up points in multilevel BOMs to evaluate level-by-level and cumulative costs and lead times
• Maintain BOMs with easy engineering change notices (ECNs) that include unlimited pages of explanatory notes
• Use extended ‘phantoms’ on BOMs to better manage service parts
• Treat phantom orders as regular items or phantom items on individual BOMs

Product Costing

• Track and evaluate job costs based on traditional and activity-based costing methods
• Define and track material and labor burden, operations, work centers and machines for improved product costing

Production Management

• Use manufacturing gates to manage production flow and create WIP in a ‘work orderless’ environment
• Improve management of JIT manufacturing by backflushing raw materials to specified manufacturing gates
• Manually override product flow routings to redistribute capacity to meet tight deadlines

Enterprise-Wide Item Management

• Improve order entry functions with automatic product configuration, which walks the user through final assembly features and options
• Drill up or down for system-wide item visibility

Contract Administration

Easily define and understand all your service commitments directly from your desktop. Contract Administration lets you create custom Service Level Agreements, schedule Preventive Maintenance appointments, estimate service charges, and more.

DIVE^© Drill-Down Financial Reporting

Our Financial Statement Report Designer provides complete control of information on P&Ls, Balance Sheets, TBs, etc. Create summary level entries and custom column calculations, and save as many templates as you’d like for instant retrieval. Our proprietary DIVE functionality captures financial statements as they are generated and stores them in a ývirtual file cabinetý. Then, when access is needed, you can open the stored statement online, and drill down into the individual transactions that generated the line entries. Your staff will save hours and days of difficult manual research.

ERPxTEND© Customer Portal

Open a web-base storefront to allow your customers to research product information, view order fulfillment, and buy online. You set limits as to which customers can view or modify which information, and retain complete control over the demand flowing from the customer into the organization.

Field/Depot Repair

Get support for all your field and depot repair operations. Field/Depot Repair provide full knowledge of your costs while optimizing repair schedules. The module lets you schedule, execute and record service activities and provides detailed control of service costing and pricing with consolidated billing, serialized equipment control and history, and graphical service order scheduling.

Fixed Assets

An often-overlooked function of standard ERP systems, the management of assets (from land and buildings to high-dollar manufacturing equipment) can have a major impact on net worth. The Fixed Assets module helps to identify assets, determine their cost and value, and generate appropriate tax information. When combined with Foresight’s Service Management Suite, you can establish Preventive Maintenance programs that help ensure consistent up time as well as capturing the costs of servicing physical plants and equipment.

General Ledger/Budgeting

Define and control your business entity structure, accounts and balances. General Ledger/Budgeting drives the core of the enterprise, providing detailed transaction capabilities, real-time inquiry functions, and completely customizable management reporting capabilities.

Help Desk

Resolve customer’s issues in seconds! Help Desk is an online solutions database that delivers valuable information so customer questions can be answered quickly and accurately. Common questions and issues can be resolved while the customer is on the phone by searching the embedded knowledge base. For more complex problems, the system can automatically generate a field- or depot repair order containing all the information the customer reported.

Inventory Management

Create product groups, items, warehouses and bins to fit your specific environment. Determine cost methods for inventory valuations, and have real-time data available in the GL 24x7. Take inventory annually, or on a scheduled cycle. Support storage in bulk, by lots, or individual serial number.

Job Shop

Job Shop lets you control all the complex variables of the custom manufacturing environment. You can easily maintain pricing, estimates and production schedules for make-to-order and engineer-to-order products.

Job and Estimate Creation

• Create bills of materials on the fly using temporary, ‘one of’ (one time) items
• Easily prepare job estimates online without committing resources
• Create and estimate new items in a single step
• Copy and modify information from existing jobs to easily create similar jobs
• Produce multilevel structures

Costing

• Retain the actual cost of completed items for the life of the job
• Create more accurate pricing by combining traditional overhead calculations with target-margin markups

Production Management

• Schedule the critical production path based on due date, machine availability and other factors
• View approved work orders and jobs in a graphical timeline format
• Zoom directly to all related information for a job, item or estimate
• Control job shop items through Manufacturing Resource Planning for better planning and scheduling
• Automatically generate work orders and customer quotes to feed sales and invoice systems

Manufacturing Resource Planning

Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) lets you analyze available information to create optimum scheduling and capacity resource planning. Your planners have the visibility they need, from fully detailed parts and item information to the master production schedule and materials requirement plan.

Planning and Scheduling

• Perform MRP in net change mode for faster recalculation or use full regenerative mode
• Maintain smooth operations with regular exception reports to identify problems early
• View a detailed time phase inventory from the last MRP run
• Create two-level master production schedules
• Produce simulated production schedules and forecasts
• Use blow-through logic for raw materials planning

Forecasting

• Improve forecasting by comparing past plans with actual results
• Forecast MRP by customer, salesperson, territory or warehouse

Demand Management

• Updates the forecast to show sales and WIP to prevent ‘double driving’
• Overrides forecast planning with up-todate sales data
• Peg upward from online work orders directly to sales orders to prioritize production
• Create consumption forecasts
• Zoom directly to pegging details for each demand and receipt

Capacity Planning

• Report capacity levels
• Drive capacity requirements planning from MRP

Order Processing

Create individual or blanket customer orders, with automatic (overridable) pricing. Support drop-shipping from your vendors, or ship to multiple locations on multiple schedules on a single order. Automatically or manually allocate inventory to orders. Identify boxes or pallets on shipments via printed labels, barcodes or RFID chips. Select the most appropriate shipping method or carrier based on price or past performance.

Production Activity Control

Production Activity Control (PAC) executes your requirements plans and manages the actual production process. You can tailor the application to the way your operation works to more efficiently control vital production processes.

Production Management

• Manage ‘push’ production with work orders and automatic scheduling, or use a JIT ‘pull’ system with ‘work orderless’ backflushing
• Accommodate parallel manufacturing
• Manage WIP accounting
• Check components online to ensure materials availability prior to scheduling work
• View job priorities by work centers and due dates
• Process barcode labels and time sheets Work orders
• Track and schedule work orders
• Create final assembly work orders from sales orders
• Generate work orders for specific customers and due dates
• Automatically generate pick lists, dispatch lists and travelers with work orders

Reports and Queries

• Report planned vs. actual efficiency and utilization for labor, work centers, machines and other production factors
• Analyze variances at aggregate (e.g. product assembly) and detail (e.g. individual operator) levels
• View work order headers by work order number or item number
• Directly zoom to all supporting information on work orders
• Access labor information associated with work orders, including time sheet details for each labor element

Purchasing

Maintain detailed item/vendor pricing and numbering information, allowing the Purchasing Department to eliminate errors in POs while locating the best sources. Control the requisition process with multiple sign-offs and price checks. Issue blanket orders and release as required. View complete audit trails of purchases and receipts.

Vendor Portal (Optional)

Offer your vendors a web-based view into your demand cycle, with individualized feedback supporting fulfillment pricing and scheduling. Manage vendor supply in near real-time, and take control of exceptions in quantities, delivery dates and quality issues.