A New Perspective for Aerospace and Defence Manufacturers

Epicor understands that as an aerospace and defence (A&D) manufacturer, you must identify, consider and respond to a new set of challenges each day. Change in this industry is a given; managing the change with tools and services to distinguish your business from local and global competition is fundamental.

With increasing pressure to reduce price in a business climate of expanding raw material cost and reduced labour availability, businesses like yours are streamlining and adopting new technology to automate business processes for more competitive lead times and to reduce waste in the organisation.

Epicor for Aerospace and Defence is a global enterprise resource planning software solution designed for manufacturing organisations who supply products and services to the aerospace and defence industry.

Improve Operational Visibility

For many manufacturers, taking stock of core business operations in an integrated fashion is the initial step in improving bottom line revenues through greater visibility into office and plant floor operations. Epicor for A&D is a completely integrated solution for managing your business. From marketing and sales through production and planning, sourcing and procurement, installation and service, and finally financial recognition, Epicor for A&D has the integrated tools to assist in your initiatives to improve operational visibility and efficiency.

Putting Your Customer at the Centre of Your Business

A&D manufacturers are continually validating their supply chain as they monitor supplier performance for delivery, cost and quality. In an effort to assist your organisation in maintaining your premier status as an A&D supplier, Epicor for A&D offers a suite of functionality designed to put the demands of your customer first. Through embedded Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality that provides complete workflow for each estimate, your customer sign off as a stage of the initial design or estimate is ensured. Additionally, with embedded Demand Scheduling and full Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) collaboration, customer demands can be implemented in real time.

Managing Work Breakdown Structures for More Accurate Estimates

Profit margins can get lost in the details. Managing simple to multi-level projects and the details required for optimum profitability and on-time delivery can be difficult, especially if multiple systems are deployed for defining and estimating, procuring, reporting of plant labour and in process status.

Epicor for A&D offers comprehensive cost and analytical detail to manage single and multiple level work breakdown structures (WBS) and to give estimators a complete picture of the project or programme, eliminating costly mistakes. With multi-level indented bill of material and routing functionality, complex assemblies can be estimated in a single entity, reducing costly redundancies and inefficiencies. Additionally, as a result of comprehensive cost controls that factor labour, material, material burden, overhead, and subcontracting, estimates are driven from accurate costing measures for peace of mind in the final estimate. Embedded with project-specific tasks and phases for managing work breakdown structures, managing project milestones, including billing and revenue recognition requirements, is automated and employee task management for customer and internal collaboration is available.

Meeting Strict Guidelines for Product Data

Product and programme specific data for A&D manufacturers is especially stringent owing to governmental and industry standards for recording products at the design, production, sourcing and delivery stages. Support for stringent product traceability, including lot traceability and lot attributes, top and lower level serial tracking, along with product documentation and revision change control are core to the system. Epicor’s robust PLM is a complete end-to-end solution developed to manage all aspects of a product’s lifecycle, as well as enabling enterprises to control the enormous amount of electronic documentation that they produce. From engineering to production to service to finance, complete product history and visibility is available.

Unique Requirements for Analysis and Reporting

Epicor offers flexible reporting options and includes project or program analytics for real-time project analysis of reporting overages, including revenue recognition as it happens rather than at the end of the project. These analytics lay the foundation for A&D industry requirements.

Maintaining Supplier Status Through Delivery Performance

For A&D manufacturers, offering superior day-to-day delivery performance, coupled with the agility to respond rapidly to requests, offers added value to customers by supporting long-term relationships and providing a needed competitive advantage.

Whether you are looking for rapid response to electronic requests via EDI orders and change orders, scheduling accuracy with embedded Advanced Planning and Scheduling, or the ability to estimate lead times more accurately with Capable to Promise functionality, Epicor for A&D offers a complete suite of tools to streamline business processes and stay on top of delivery schedules.

It is a known fact that the number of suppliers servicing the A&D manufacturing industry has been reduced greatly in the last decade. Epicor for A&D offers a suite of tools that promote tighter collaboration throughout the supply chain while analysing the same metrics you are measured on such as supplier shipping performance. Electronically collaborate with your suppliers through Epicor’s supplier portal.

Improve Lead Times and Reduce Waste With Lean Methodologies

Innovative manufacturers who deploy Lean methodologies business-wide reap huge benefits in terms of customer satisfaction and overall business performance.

Epicor for A&D can help. Manufacturers looking to reduce waste from the office to plant floor, integrated systems streamline business process. Additionally, support for cell-based strategies and demand pull systems provide the framework for elimination of waste in the manufacturing process. Epicor for A&D contains embedded Kanban functionality (e.g. signal to manufacture or move product) that manages several types of electronic signals for Kanban control. As supply levels or order demand requires additional product, Kanbans are automatically triggered for replenishment.

Regulatory Compliance

On top of the other challenges facing A&D manufacturers, a new set of governmental and industry mandated regulatory requirements that demand tight control of manufacturing process and traceability, along with strict business practices, are further stressing A&D organisations. From Sarbanes-Oxley to ISO/AS9001, today’s A&D manufacturer is faced with challenges that eat at the bottom line of their profits. Epicor’s robust infrastructure coupled with its comprehensive Quality Suite (including Epicor Quality Assurance and Epicor Advanced Quality Management) offers a comprehensive approach to automating the compliance process.

Gaining Margin With Additional Services

Manufacturing plants that at one time were just producing products are now looking for new ways to be competitive and enhance profit margins. In response to customer demands, more and more are taking on quality functions, doing assembly to supply complete components and offering onsite installation and maintenance services as a way to compete. For these manufacturers, Epicor for A&D offers Field Service capabilities for organisations that install, repair or service offsite or at the plant. You can centralise all processes related to the dispatching of technicians and cost reporting of service calls in the field. From service-level agreements to service call centre dispatching to warranty and return, complete full circle tracking of service events and billing are offered.

Diversifying Your Workforce

In this business climate, many manufacturers are stepping up new programmes for recruiting new workers and cross-training existing workers. Along with these new initiatives, new industry mandates requiring strict proof of competence and training are forcing manufacturers to move beyond their Excel spreadsheets to systems that automate tracking of the workforce. Epicor Human Resource Management System (HRMS) enables you to meet strict mandates for employee skills, certifications and qualifications.

Supporting Extended and Global Operations

With competitive pressures driving many manufacturers to expand globally where labour is considerably less expensive coupled with the recent trend in plant consolidations, many manufacturers today both large and small find themselves suddenly managing multiple sites disparately.

Epicor for A&D offers comprehensive multi-site capabilities coupled with global presence to meet your company’s requirements for local support. Competing globally and domestically—bridging geographic and strategic diversity and eliminating supply chain inefficiencies—can be accomplished with the technologies to streamline intra- and intercompany processes and communicate quickly and accurately. Synchronisation of complex relationships which determine supply, demand and fulfilment is the means to reaching new, industry leading levels of business performance, all while adhering to global standards for trade of parts such as GTIN-14, and RoHS compliance. Epicor for A&D can help you achieve maximum efficiencies across your global enterprise.

Robust Technology Framework

Epicor is uniquely positioned with a complete suite of applications based on 100% Web services technology, protecting your investment in software and services well into the future.

Why are Web services so important to manufacturers, particularly in A&D? Outside of all the reasons organisations look to Web services for deployment; speed, stability, reusability and more; for midsize manufacturers who supply top A&D manufacturers, the prime incentive is to drive electronic collaboration more firmly into their supply chain. Web services collaboration is fast becoming a necessity to doing business.

Epicor for A&D is uniquely positioned on this technology today and comes with a suite of Web services tools such as Epicor Service Connect that make internal and external service collaboration a reality.

Industry Leading Service and Support

Epicor has over 20 years of experience delivering industry focused, world-class solutions and ongoing customer care and service to over 20,000 customer installations. It is a true global solutions partner with support offices all over the world. The key vehicle that transforms Epicor for A&D into a successful business solution is its Signature Implementation methodology.

Signature allows Epicor to provide consistent, customer focused implementations that deliver added value because it provides a controlled environment. It is a highly structured, proven implementation methodology that successfully guides you and your company through a six step process, from an in-depth analysis of your business requirements all the way to the hand over, enabling your company to begin using Epicor for A&D quickly in day-to-day operations. Signature and Epicor for A&D save your company time and money by providing broad functionality at a lower total cost of ownership.