One of the questions I almost always get asked when I am speaking about the MISys Manufacturing System is “What makes MISys different from other inventory control programs?”
I hope no one notices but this question always causes me to pause for a few seconds and contemplate the 20+ years that MISys has been in development. Not that it took us 20+ years to write the program, but that it has taken us that long to refine the program into the tool that today’s manufacturers find useful and valuable.
Way back when (I think that was sometime in the late ‘80s), MISys was an inventory control program – one specifically geared to the needs of manufacturing companies – and a pretty good one if I do say so.
Somewhere along the line, our development of MISys began to focus less on the software as an inventory control program, and more as a manufacturing planning tool. We began to understand that, absent an effective manufacturing business management system, manufacturers are inclined to load up on raw materials, just in case. (Hey, if you keep your pantry stocked to the gills with food, you’ll never go hungry.) But is that a good management practice? No!
Because excess inventory (milk and bread, or nuts and bolts) is a waste of a valuable resource ($money) we began to think that the focus of the MISys software should be on helping manufacturers maintain less inventory, not more.
Today, MISys can be used as an effective manufacturing inventory management system. But there is so much more to the software. Which takes me back to the question “What makes MISys different from other inventory control programs?”
Well, I’d have to say “Those other systems help you maintain an inventory. MISys helps you maintain no inventory.”
Not that it is possible to operate with zero inventory (at least not in my experience). But reducing the inventory by 30-50% or more is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.
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