Sage 100

I have a customer looking for a manufacturing add-on for Sage 100. His comment about Sage 100 is: ""The scheduling side of Work Order/MRP uses infinite loading, so it schedules every W/O like it's the only one in the system."" The customer is familiar with JobOps and would like something else that can do the following: - Visual scheduling, like a bar schedule for each work center. - The ability to ""drag and drop"" schedule, where you can click on a work order and move it where you want it on the schedule and it will cascade through and reschedule anything necessary. - ""What If"" scheduling capability, where you can move things around on a schedule until you get what you like, then publish it or make it live. - Estimated Lead time to manufacture based on current capacity, where we could enter an item or a SO# and have it indicate when that item/order could ship based on current capacity at all the work centers where those items would need to go. Does anyone know of an add-on or even a standalone that would have the ability to read the Sage 100 data? I'm not finding anything, and of course, it is with good reason I cannot find anything other than JobOps since Sage 100 doesn't really fit manufacturing very well. Any ideas is greatly appreciated!

I saw a demo of JobPack Core Scheduler at Summit and it was freaking awesome. And freaking expensive (like 20K+). But if that doesn't make your client pass out, you might want to check it out. www.jobpack.com

Some years ago, this looked interesting. Perhaps it will look more interesting once WO gets the BF once over. http://www.planettogether.com/

JobOps has ALL of the functionality that you bulleted ... just curious why the customer would not want an integrated solution with Sage 100 that does all of what they need?

Thanks Beth and Jeff for the suggestions. I remember meeting some folks from PlanetTogether several years ago. I will check both of those out. I have no idea what the budget is, but the customer doesn't usually look at price first so I think they will want to evaluate both of them. Jane, the main reason given for not wanting JobOps at this time is the complexity of JobOps, and the deep ""hooks"" (tentacles, I think is what the customer said) of the JobOps program. The customer doesn't feel the staff can handle JobOps so he would prefer something that is less intrusive. For what it's worth, I lead with JobOps. :-)

We sat in on a JobPack demo with one of our clients yesterday. It looks beautiful. The person presenting couldn't tell me how data gets passed from their software back into Sage 100, so I'll be working with our client to find out how that works if they are interested.

Yay @BarbaraGoldstein - I'm glad someone else is in love with it. I don't have the right client yet, though. :-(

Just a heads up, Planettogether was purchased by Infor several years ago. We included it in a proposed solution on a Sage 500 deal. At the time, the Planettogether team was not heavily influenced by the additional Infor ERP teams but it is worth being aware of the possible conflict. If interested, I can get you contact information for Bill Hammer at Infor. He works on their channel development team and has always been very helpful.

BTW, wasn't Joe Bisaha working on a scheduling tool for Sage 100? I think he mentioned something about that at Meeting of the Minds in February.

I looked at planettogether about 4 years ago. It struck me as a solid scheduler but they didn't seem to have a clue about how it could/would work with Sage 100 WO and the limited UDF capabilities. Needless to say, I went no where with it but feel it could have merit if WO ever went to the BF.

Take a look at the Manufacturing Efficiency suite of enhancements from ACS, it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles on the visual scheduling side of things but is pretty easy to use and constantly being enhanced. www.acsg.com ask for Ron Jacobs for more info.

As far as I know, Joe is not working on scheduling. Your client is correct @BrianKelly. They probably cannot handle scheduling in JobOps, and that's true with most JobOps users and the Sage 100 community in general. Most are too small to commit the staff and too unsophisticated to really understand the complexities of scheduling. Another exhibitor at Summit was Preactor, and they integrate to many ERP systems. Their system is much better than those already mentioned, but perhaps what everyone is looking for is something simple. We are currently reviewing the potential of integrating Preactor to JobOps as a higher level scheduling function. I imagine it could also integrate with Work Order.

@JohnnyPabian told us about leankit at MOTM that was very simple, but don't know how it integrates. leankit.com

I think @MyronStevenson also uses it. Has done some scripting with it.

Talk to Ron Jacobs at ACSG about Schedule BOM - it is being sold already - it will have the scheduling you desire(coming soon)(not sure on what if), also leankit integration(coming soon) as well as labor tracking (coming soon) - let us know what the customer leans towards after discussing options.

@JohnHoyt have you made any progress with Preactor's capabilities with JobOps? When I asked Ryan Rick there was zero commitment on their part. I was so impressed with their board and the capabilities and it seems like the ""ticket"" to get scheduling where it needs to be for JobOps without JobOps having to rewrite the scheduling board.

I believe it is in Preactor's court. Ryan is very interested, but until he gets a commitment from Preactor, he cannot say much. I agree, it would be an excellent solution.