Today, we know that without a sound, cross-functional approach to systems, projects and technology, solving one challenge may actually impede a company’s ability to solve others.

For example, putting in a stand-alone application to monitor quality may create an island of information that can’t easily be integrated with other systems or leveraged by other users. Numerous point solutions together generate multiple tech support agreements, multiple servers and operating systems, and more training requirements.

When the point solution is home grown, it can be even more difficult to support – with eventual loss of expertise and difficulty applying technology outside of a single plant. The support and financial drain on IT can be substantial.

However, you can reduce the number of stand-alone point solutions in your plant and throughout your enterprise by using a modular, scalable platform that can be used across your entire organization – one that still supports the uniqueness of each site.

This platform can also help you integrate the Islands-of-information that exist in the dissimilar systems, equipment and applications on your plant floor.

You can reduce your overall system costs by standardizing on off-the-shelf solutions and infrastructure, using common training for users and administrators, reducing the dependence on custom interfaces and systems, and supporting fewer applications.

Next, you can connect your plant floor infrastructure with your enterprise, using standard proven tools to ease integration. You will be able to automatically confirm production against schedules, report resource consumption, and track genealogy and WIP – so you don’t need to perform multiple entries of the same data in multiple systems.

With this foundation of Production Management Software, you can allow system users to serve themselves with reports, real-time displays and analysis tools – which saves precious IT resources for more value-added activities. GE Fanuc Production Management Software provides add-in’s for Microsoft Excel for an additional boost in user self-sufficiency. Your users can leverage their existing Excel skills – and access Production Management information without needing programming or database skills. You can also easily turn existing Excel reports into interactive and automated web reports, alongside standard reports that come with Production Management Software right out of the box.