Manufacturing in Ostendo

Ostendo is ideally suited for manufacturers who are currently being restricted by the manufacturing functionality in their accounting software. A lot of accounting software does not track Work in Progress (WIP) well, which is one of the primary reasons accounting software is not adequate by itself to properly manage a manufacturing based organisation.

Ostendo has many advanced features typically only found in enterprise level manufacturing systems, including: cost rollups, by-products, MRP and capacity planning.

In addition to these features, Ostendo is highly customisable and new functionality can be added with relative ease due to Ostendo being based on a powerful SQL relational database.

Some of the manufacturing features you will find in Ostendo:

• Perform cost roll-ups through multi level BOMs
• Option to automate purchase order generation for material requirements
• Automate generation of work orders to meet inventory / order requirements
• Unlimited level bills of material (BOMs)
• Capacity planning by machine or department
• Full batch / serial traceability throughout the manufacturing process
• Phantom products are supported
• Ability to compare planned usage vs. actuals on a job by job basis
• Assign assets and employees to jobs
• Timesheet functionality with associated reporting
• In-depth reporting capabilities across all areas of the system
• Create rules-based custom products
• Attach plans / documents to work orders

Configured Custom Products

Configured custom products is an extremely powerful feature in Ostendo. Ostendo provides for three different styles of Configured Custom Products to cater for different industries:

Manual: This style allows the build up of a Bill of Material (BOM) unique to the Sales or Job Line. It basically presents the user with the ability to build a custom product via an enhanced BOM screen. The user can alter the margin / mark-up by component line, and therefore rollup the costs and prices to formulate an estimate for that distinct configuration.

The Manual Method of configuring a custom product is ideal for industries that don’t necessarily have fixed rules and potentially have an endless array of end products that can be manufactured (i.e. The sign manufacturing industry).

Rules: This style allows for custom product scripts to be defined against the item and can facilitate pretty much any rules based product. In other words it wouldn’t be suitable for environments where there are no rules (Manual style is designed for that), but because of the nature of scripting, it can support industries where there are complicated calculations, questions that are dependent on previous answers etc… However, the main downside to this style is that it does require the ability to develop the custom script.

Industries like joinery, manufacturers with steps based on rules, are well suited to Rules Based Configuration because of their unlimited dimensional combinations.

Features and Options: This style sits in between the Manual and Rules styles. It allows for Features & Options to be added to a standard Bill of Material (BOM). The idea is that the product has a number of predefined features, and for each of those features, a predefined list of options. Each option then has a defined price, enabling the user to configure which feature/option is required for that specific sales/job line. The end result (like the other 2 styles) is that a unique BOM is created and used to generate a linked Assembly Order.

The big advantage of this style over Rules, is that it is very simple to set-up and maintain.

Industries like furniture or motor home manufacturers, and landscapers are well suited for the Features and Options type of custom product.

Food and Chemical Processing in Ostendo

Ostendo has a wide range of feature for companies involved in Food and Chemical Processing and Distribution.   They include:

• Batch control and expiry tracking
• Full traceability for each product throughout the supply chain
• Recipe management
• Cost roll-ups
• Product recall reports
• Daily production reports
• Easily create and utilise barcodes
• Store nutritional information
• Generate drivers run sheets and packing reports

A key feature of Ostendo is its capabilities in the areas of batch control, expiry date tracking and traceability.  At the touch of a button, you are able to see a full history of the sales and movements of each batch including a list of the customer contact details for each batch purchased, as well as the date of each transaction.