Personalizing an ERP for your Plastics Manufacturing Organization

Mass customization is a goal for many Plastics Manufacturers, and the concept is pretty simple. Differentiating through smaller runs that are differentiated by the custom nature and desires of your customer. Enriching the customer experience – great in theory, but not always easy to execute.

This same concept extends to your ERP system. Out of the box implementations certainly make future upgrades easier, but often at the expense of your Plastic Manufacturing Value Proposition, and completely opposed to a mass customization premise. Customize in an attempt to personalize the ERP and customer experience, and while this may help achieve the targeted, functional goals, it also adds complexity (and cost/time) to a future upgrade.

Fortunately, vendors like Microsoft (with their Dynamics 365 solution) are building their ERP in such a way to allow customizations without the complexity, time, and cost normally associated with doing so.

Additionally, Microsoft is introducing tools to reuse time-tested and useful tools like Excel while also integrating process workflow, external data, and applications caused by Digital Transformation.

Enter Microsoft Flow.  For more on Flow and an actual example, see post, “Dynamics 365 for Operations Example Using Excel and Microsoft Flow: Vendors Upload”