Chad Decker Interview Part 2: Integrating DELMIA with ERP Software

Gene: Of course, as always, I would be remiss in my duties to be a D4M employee to not mention the integration of scheduling software with an ERP. Can you briefly talk about using DELMIA with an ERP, whether or not it’s potentially simple to integrate, and what are some of the benefits that you would get from the process?

Chad: Absolutely. So, ERPs are very important in the ecosystem. When you look at – again, I don’t know if folks are going to be familiar with the I.S.A. 95 model – but, if you look at tiers or levels in manufacturing, you have four levels: level 1 and level 2 is your control systems, level 3 is your minutes/hours/days tier (where your execution system lives), and then level 4 is days/weeks/months (which is where you’re higher-level financial systems and upper level plannings ERP things live).

Chad: So, one of the things that is crucial is, again, if I’m manufacturing a product, someone needs to take an order and I’m going to need to get paid for that. So, that’s where your financial systems come in to say “Oh, okay! Great! Yes! That’s a valid order! Here’s the price! Eventually, we’re going to make this thing and we’re going to need to send you an invoice, and we’re going to get paid, etc.”

Chad: Similarly, if I’m receiving material, I need to recognize the fact that I had to order it right? Some systems need to create an order. Once I receive that material, I need to get that into inventory and such, but also, “oh, I’m going to need to send somebody a check, right?” Because I want to buy, be able to buy more of that!”

Chad: So, the financial piece is very important – Accounting, financial, etc – and that’s mostly where ERPs come in. Where Delmia typically integrates with that is when – again, back to that shop order “go make me this thing” – ERPs are very transactional about things – by their very nature.

Chad: But again, that flow and all the fundamental steps of that where you start by asking “Oh, I got an order. What do I need to start first? How long do I need to start? What’s my lead time? Do I have things on the shelf? Do I need to tell people to make things? How do I do that? How do I actually put this together? How do I keep track of things?”

Chad: That’s really where Delmia starts to integrate with the ERP and then we can send interim status back to say, “Hey, I made this interim step. I need you to backflush material.” Because again, maybe you’ve got a very long lead time item, like an airplane, right? Where it may take weeks or months to put together. And so I may need to backflush material and to say I don’t have this anymore or I Have an interim step I’ve completed – I may want to send updates to the customer to say, “Oh, I’ve made it to the stage!” There may be various things. And again, we may want to send the statuses or updates back to the ERP – so the ERP knows what’s going on.

Chad: But really, that detail – again, you go from level four to level three – that interim level of detail, the ERPs don’t do very well at that, hour/day/shift tier.

Chad: And so, back when I was working for a customer of Dassault, the ERP would take the order – and it was a configured order; every order could be a snowflake of different configurations, I can choose different options and such – but essentially, once you would say, “okay, go make this thing!” Once the process was done, the ERP was largely ignorant of that; magic happened and then finished product showed up and then they could ship it with the ERP not being the wiser.

Chad: So, there’s a lot of things that happen within that sort of order drop to the floor and completion and that’s really where the Delmia suite fills in.