Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware)

ERP Discrete vs. ERP Process

People often ask “what’s the difference between process and discrete ERP?” Here’s a rough overview of the difference.
A quick definition from APICS (The Association for Operations Management) describes discrete manufacturing as “the production of distinct items such as automobiles, appliances, or computers,” whereas process manufacturing covers “production that adds value by mixing, separating, forming, and/or performing chemical reactions. It may be done in either batch or continuous mode.” Now let’s look at a few examples.

Think about what your company manufactures. Does it require mixing chemicals? If so, you may need an ERP system that does things like calculate ingredient quantities. If your industry produces the type of product that doesn’t lend itself to being disassembled into its individual components, it’s likely you need to consider a process ERP system. On the other hand, if your company assembles products from many component parts, you’ll require discrete manufacturing functionality.

You Cannot Put the Juice Back into the Orange
In his article Process Manufacturing Software: A Primer, IT consultant Joe Strub explains the difference with this example:

Once you make a can of soda, you cannot return it back to its basic components such as carbonated water, citric acid, potassium benzoate, aspartame, and other ingredients. You cannot put the juice back into the orange. A car or computer, on the other hand, can be disassembled and the parts, to a large extent, can be returned to stock.
In addition, process manufacturing is scalable. If a formula calls for 1,000 pounds of cake flour, but you only have 500 pounds, you can still bake cakes—just not as many. Conversely, in discrete manufacturing, one missing part means waiting for it before the finished assembly unit can start rolling off the production line.

At Axone we model functionality for manufacturing in discrete or process industries under the following categories.

If you’re talking about requirements involving bills of material (BOMs) that list the component parts for assembly, you’d find those covered through the discrete manufacturing categories. But if you’re talking about functionality for formulas, recipes, or ingredients, those would tend toward the process manufacturing categories.

So, be on your toes when you are buying an ERP manufacturing system from a vendor. Make sure that what your buying can support your manufacturing processes. There are quite a few vendors who will generally “tout” GP to a ERP Processes Customer, and that customer discovers well into the implementation that their unique process industry needs cannot be met by GP.

Lets be clear on this GP, can only effectively support DISCREET Manufactures. It does NOT have the functionality to support Process Based Industries and Companies. So, Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware).