Managing Prospect Quotes in ALERE (Also, ‘Where Used’ in BOMs and Work Order Revisions)
PSSI has been implementing ALERE manufacturing software for over 25 years, and we still think it’s one of the best-priced, best-functioning software products you can buy anywhere. Users appreciate ALERE’s flexibility over many other systems.
Below, a few features that make ALERE manufacturing software work so well for so many…
Managing Prospect Quotes
A major challenge for many companies is handling sales quotes for prospects. Often, one or more quotes can go out to prospects as part of the effort to close that first sale and turn them into customers. The ALERE InTouch CRM module is designed to manage prospects and facilitate the creation of quotes for them.
There are several different reports dealing with prospect quotes, and recently the InTouch Prospect Profile screen had two new tabs added related to quotes [see image above].
The Quote tab provides a convenient listing of the different quotes for a particular prospect. The list can be filtered by the status of the quote and a date range of when it was created. Double left clicking on a quote will hyperlink you to the actual document.
The Items tab complements the Quotes tab by listing the individual items on the quotes. Panoptic filtering can be done to look for certain items and quantities.
These two tabs place extensive amounts of information at your fingertips.
Where is an Item Used by BOM’s
A supplier notifies you that they are discontinuing an item you purchase from them and replacing it with another. You need to determine which BOM’s use that item, set an inactive date when the item will no longer be available, add the new item to the BOM’s, and enter the date it will become active. First you have to find which BOM’s use the item.
In v15.0 a Used button was added to the Inventory Item Master screen. Clicking on it will display a browser listing every BOM where the item is used as a component.
The Item Where Used browser provides three options. The first is to go directly to one of the BOM’s by choosing it and clicking on the Select button. The second is to print the list of BOM’s and the third is to send the list to an Excel file.
While there is a Where Used report available, the addition of the Used button provides a more direct and immediate way of managing inventory items that are used as components in bills of material. This helps keeping material planning accurate and ensures production is not interrupted when the old item is no longer available.
Work Order Revisions
Contrary to the way in which most manufacturing systems are designed, work orders in ALERE facilitate changes to material lists and routes to meet production conditions. Allowing changes make the work orders much more flexible but can introduce one major issue during the manufacturing process. Is the work order document on the floor up to date?
To address this question, work orders can track revision numbers and dates. Work revisions can be done manually or can be controlled automatically according to how the Track WO Revision option is set on the Company Defaults Option tab.
Double clicking in the WO Rev field will display a revision note with a user, date, and time stamp. The note allows a reason to accompany the revision. Right clicking in the text area supports inserting file Hyperlinks to integrate relevant specifications, drawings, etc. for document management purposes.
Work order revisions round out the support required allowing changes to be tracked and the production floor kept up to date.
- Want to Learn More About ALERE?
TIW has a 7 minute “Manufacturing Overview Video“ on YouTube that gives a concise summary of what manufacturing software can do for you. Click the link below to see why ALERE may be a great fit for your manufacturing operations.
To learn more, call us any time at 877.273.2444, or visit us on the web. |