From Spreadsheets to MRP: How SMB Manufacturers Are Improving Visibility to Inventory and Costs with MRPeasy

How do you know when your current setup has stopped working, and what to do with it when it does?

In this bonus episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, Chris sits down with Shane Dubbelman, Head of Partnerships at MRPeasy, and Sara Duff, Managing Director at Smart Manufacture, to talk about what happens at that point, when the lack of visibility into inventory, costs, and operations starts to hold a business back.

They get into where spreadsheets begin to slack, how to think about MRP vs ERP at that stage of growth, and why a lot of companies looking at ERP are probably aiming too far ahead of what they need.

Sara shares a couple of examples from her work with manufacturers, including how one CNC machining business ended up stretched across a mix of disconnected tools. And Shane walks through how MRPeasy approaches the tricky task of implementation

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3 Quick Things from this Episode

1. A common tipping point for leaving spreadsheets is inventory visibility. Teams don’t know what they have, what it costs, or if an order can ship. Shane Dubbelman from MRPeasy sees this a lot. Around 15 employees, growing fast, and the systems haven’t kept up. Spreadsheets aren’t the issue on their own. It’s when everything lives in different places and starts slowing things down.
2. Sara Duff shares a fire door seal manufacturer as an example. They were tracking jobs across three Excel files, using paper job cards on the floor, and relying on people to walk the site just to check order status. After moving to MRPeasy, that changed. Orders could be tracked properly. Delivery performance improved to over 99% OTIF. The business grew 25% in a year, without adding many new people.
3. The gap between companies that scale and those that stall comes down to mindset. The teams that move forward are open to doing things differently. Even when they don’t have it all mapped out. Others treat implementation as a one-off task, but the ones that succeed keep working at it.

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Tweetable Quotes

• “A lot of small manufacturers that are looking for ERP software probably actually need MRP software – because they’re looking to manage their manufacturing.” – Shane Dubbelman
• “A year after MRPeasy went live, they grew their business by just over 25% – without significantly increasing their headcount. The system made that possible.” – Sara Duff
• “It’s those that are open to looking at there being a different way of doing things. I may not know exactly how to do that, but if I bring in the right people and the right technology, I can achieve it.” – Sara Duff

Please Scroll Down for Recommended Resources from this Episode

 

Recommended Resources

• MRPeasy User Manual, installing MRPeasy does not have to be hard or expensive; you can even do it yourself 
• Smart Manufacture, UK-based Smart Manufacture works with companies from SMEs to Mid-Market across multiple verticals, including engineering to order, discrete manufacturing, batch manufacturing and process manufacturing; Smart Manufacture help these companies to specify, select and implement proven best of breed software which can deliver tangible business outcomes – reduced costs, improved operational efficiencies, increased revenues and improved productivity 

Connect with Shane and Sara

MRPeasy | Shane Dubbelman | Sara Duff