San Ramon, CA September 14, 2001 As a result of partnering with its build-to-order, discrete manufacturing and maintenance organization customers, Relevant Business Systems has enhanced its INFIMACS II Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suite by providing users with estimating management tools. Users can generate estimates for new or existing products, customize estimates for customers or prospects, change estimates to quotes and orders, convert prospects to customers and extract data in reports and queries.
"INFIMACS II estimating management works likes an engineer's white board, allowing users to change factors and routings, erase components, add charges, and price and recalculate the estimate throughout the process," explained Chuck Stevenson, Relevant Business Systems' vice president of marketing and sales. "An estimate may be constructed from existing parts, present bills of material (BOMs), existing routings, user-defined new part numbers, user-entered bills of materials and routings, and user-specified items to collect such additional costs as design and engineering labor, as well as special charges. With this tool, users can produce a cost basis of the assembled' product on the white board."
Uses for these estimates include "what-if" scenarios, developing new products or finding more cost-effective ways to manufacture an existing product. Estimates can be generated for an existing customer, a prospect or for internal use only. They can be customized to meet requirements specified by the requestor.
Users can enter an existing item number, which is validated against the engineering master database. Item master, routings and multi-level BOMs can be imported from production and then modified in the estimate. If a new item is added, it can be created from scratch based on an existing production item or added as an "other direct charge," allowing costs to be added to that line.
Stevenson added, "Once the base item and cost data are in the estimating database, users can alter routings on a line to reflect changes in processing or costs. They can modify detail components. Prices can be calculated at any time. Factors can be applied to material, labor, overhead and subcontract costs, the total estimate, or line level. Effects can be seen immediately."
The enhanced INFIMACS II estimating management capability is available now.
