What it is

Infor VISUAL is an easy-to-implement business solution that provides manufacturers and distributors like you with multiple scheduling options so you can start improving performance immediately. Affordable and easy to use, Infor VISUAL incorporates:

• Advanced planning and scheduling (APS)
• Manufacturing execution system (MES)
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Quality management
• Lean scheduling
• Project management
• Financials
• Dashboard

Infor VISUAL provides an entirely different approach to shop-floor scheduling that's been refined through 20+ years of experience and thousands of successful customer implementations. The solution is based on a patented, finite scheduling algorithm that accounts for actual capacity, and includes on-hand and expected material availability.

Designed specifically for manufacturers, Infor VISUAL solves issues for various industries, including:

• Industrial manufacturing
• Aerospace and defense
• Automotive
• Industrial equipment and machinery
• Heavy fabrication
• Specialty vehicles
• Medical devices

What it does

Infor VISUAL quickly converts customer requirements into manufacturing requirements and then executes them efficiently. Lean concepts eliminate redundant or wasteful steps that you are often forced to go through with other manufacturing software.

True to its name, Infor VISUAL provides a compelling visual presentation that shows how each part of the manufacturing process relates to the others—helping to resolve bottlenecks, schedule effectively, and price jobs accurately.

Infor VISUAL supports mixed-mode production strategies, including engineer-to-order, make-to-order, assemble-to-order, and make-to-stock. Infor VISUAL also displays all key statistics on a single screen, helping ensure that schedules are met, materials arrive on time, and costs are in line with estimates.

Infor VISUAL's core capabilities include:

• Manufacturing visibility—Create an engineering plan or bill of material (BOM) quickly and easily with a full-color, graphical interface, and then use the design to automatically create a quote and/or work order.
• Cost accounting—Capture costs as changes occur, ensuring up-to-date and accurate costs.
• Quoting and estimating—Create professional and comprehensive quotations, determine realistic delivery dates based on material and resource availability, and turn quotes into sales orders.
• Order management—Manage large volumes of customer orders and meet varied fulfillment objectives.
• Contact center—Retain existing customers and acquire new accounts by tracking everything you need to know about prospects and customers.
• Purchasing—Coordinate material purchases with online decision support that simplifies record keeping.
• Concurrent scheduling—Ensure the most efficient use of materials and resources, and provide the necessary information to deliver products on time.
• Material requirements planning (MRP)—Manage the balance between supply and demand using a comprehensive analysis of your material situation.
• Master production scheduling (MPS)—Translate business plans, including forecasted demand, into production plans using firm planned orders in a true multi-level, optional component scheduling environment.
• Shop floor control—Take complete control over production operations, eliminating redundant data entry and ensuring consistency and accuracy throughout the shop floor.
• Quality management—Establish, track, and manage every engineering activity and supply chain expectation, while supporting business growth and profitability goals. Create critical manufacturing specifications for products, processes, equipment, and measuring devices, and improve enterprise team collaboration with vendors, customers, and employees.
• Business intelligence—Allow decision makers to view and analyze key factors and performance trends in the areas of sales, purchasing, production, and finance.
• Inventory control—Improve accuracy and gain immediate access to inventory information throughout the company.
• Dimensional inventory tracking—Break down the total quantity of inventoried parts into various dimensional sizes.
• Engineering change notice—Establish controls and manage the process of making changes to documents and drawings, parts, BOMs and routings, work orders, and projects.
• Throughput—Measure productivity by considering the contribution of a job or product toward company profit, calculated as price of goods sold minus cost to produce.
• Workflow—Allow information to pass from one person or department to another through an automated process cycle, integrating policies and procedures with information flow according to predefined conditions and rules.
• Data import utility—Generate properly formatted files with a BOM and part-import interface for 3PL applications.
• Messages—Ensure important information is transmitted to appropriate persons within or outside the company using familiar email features.
• Management reporting—Analyze and manages enterprise and accounting data, build customized queries and forms, define business graphics, and create complex cross-tabular reports.
• Return material authorization (RMA)—Manage documents that control the return of parts previously sold and shipped to a customer.
• Lot and serial traceability—Create trace records for each lot number, serial number, or other grouping of a part, and automatically track each part as it flows through your plant.

What it means

You'll have the power to:

• Plan production quickly, without mistakes.
• Schedule jobs efficiently.
• Make quality intrinsic—from design to delivery.
• Provide confident answers when customers ask about delivery dates.
• Manage inventory more effectively.
• Deliver consistently profitable results.
• Manufacture at a level of speed and efficiency that makes the best use of your resources.

With Infor VISUAL, you'll have the structure to create more predictable processes and a better see how every change affects your business.