3 Easy-to-Use Manufacturing Operations Softwares Solutions

If you manage or lead manufacturing operations, chances are that you are likely juggling multiple functions at once. As an operational lead/supervisor, you need to optimize for efficiency, speed, and scale of your workflow. You need to furthermore ensure that inventories are stocked at the right amount and time. 

In addition, you probably have a number of quality control/compliance standards you must hit – ensuring that the quality of your product is consistent and that all team members are on the same page about core standards and specifications. 

Finally, for many tasks and objectives, you may prefer to delegate or partner up with third-party vendors. 

A good, easy to use manufacturing operation software solution could make or break your company’s performance – helping you to navigate the otherwise challenging ecosystem of competing goals and demands. 

With that in mind, we are suggesting:

Quality Management and Compliance For Manufacturing Operations

MasterControl

A good quality manufacturing operations software is essential to your entire operations. Acquiring a great QMS software is especially important for manufacturers in highly regulated markets like consumer packaged goods or medical devices. 

MasterControl has a reputation for ease of use and for enabling smooth team-wide collaboration. You can train your employees, audit for quality, and ensure compliance with stringent standards all in one place. 

Typically, when it comes to quality control, the two areas of major difficulty and friction are:

1. Change management
2. CAPA (corrective action and preventive action)
3. Deviation management. 

Things can get messy and out of sync pretty quickly. MasterControl enables you to remain on top of all changes and corrective actions with efficient e-forms allowing for smooth traceability for your manufacturing operations. 

Its equipment calibration solution will manage your calibration schedule and automatically prompt calibration events before the due date. MasterControl will furthermore route calibration tasks to the appropriate personnel and provide advanced reporting capabilities. A complete record with calibration data is stored – when the time for audits and inspections arrives. 

In short, if you want great visibility, speed, and accurate history of all quality management decisions, MasterControl may be worth a try. 

Supply Chain and Partner Management

Arena 

Arena PLM works with a range of manufacturing companies to keep their supply chain on the same page. Arena empowers internal teams and supply chain partners to collaborate more effectively – from early design, all the way through volume production.

With Arena, you can speed up your procurement/purchasing process by quickly finding approved manufacturers (AML) and vendors (AVL). 

Once a partner is selected and sourced, Arena will enable your internal team to work faster with external providers and collaborate around crucial areas like Engineering Change Management: by speeding up the usually lengthy engineering change request (ECR) and engineering change order (ECO) review processes with automated approval routings. 

In short, if you want to source and collaborate with partner manufacturers, Arena is one of the best manufacturing software solutions to check out! 

Production Workflow, Inventory Management, and Field Operations 

Jestor

Simply put, Jestor is an extremely easy to use relational database and an ERP alternative. The reason for this is simple: using Jestor requires no coding knowledge or skill. 

If you want to build a customized production workflow for manufacturing operations(with logic/triggers unique to your process), or an inventory management database with associated automation and triggers (for example, creating notifications to order replacements when inventories are running low), doing so on Jestor will be extremely easy and quick. It will need no coding skills whatsoever. 

Any member of your team can easily learn to navigate Jestor’s tables (alternatives to unscalable and easily overwhelmed spreadsheets), workflow automation, and its apps – that:

1. Empower you with a high-level customized overview and real-time data analytics of your operations and
2. Enable your field operations teams to execute complex processes using our mobile apps (with QR code scans and doc/picture upload capabilities). 

Next steps to finding the perfect manufacturing operations software

There we have the 3 best manufacturing software solutions for each of the crucial steps in your operations workflow to look out for when choosing to implement new software in your company.

Make sure to check out software comparison sites such as Capterra. But, for now, get started with Jestor’s and take your manufacturing operations management to the next level.