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What is Catalyst Manufacturing? //

Catalyst Manufacturing® software is a full-featured Material Requirements Planning (MRP) system designed to meet the planning, scheduling, and
inventory needs of the small and midsized manufacturer in make-to-order, assemble-to-order, make-to-stock, engineer-to-order and configure-
to-order production environments.  
 
Catalyst Manufacturing provides extensive manufacturing functionality to manage and plan people, equipment, materials, suppliers and ultimately
satisfy customer demand. On the financial side, Catalyst enables you to leverage your existing capabilities and expertise with a standard interface
to QuickBooks Pro®, Premier®, and Enterprise® Editions.
 

FEATURES

 

Catalyst Manufacturing includes much of the same functionality found in higher-end ERP/MRP II packages for a fraction of the cost, including:
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  • Material Requirements Planning (MRP) generated planned orders based on gross requirements netted against on-hand and on-order inventory

  • Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) to view work center capacity load profiles of backward-scheduled planned orders and shop orders

  • Finite capacity scheduling to level-load production requirements against available capacity

  • Multi-level bill-of-materials with indented reports and graphical views

  • Lot number and serial number control with multi-level how-made/where-used lot traceability

  • Material management and control of outside process operations and contract locations

  • Material allocation to highlight inventory available for new production or customer orders

  • Material and labor backflush with backflush confirmation at receipt

  • Cycle Count module to identify inventory errors and apply corrective actions

  • Net change physical inventory capability

  • Dimensional inventory or revision control to track either an item's dimensions or revision number in inventory

  • Features & Options create quote configuration for engineer-to-order/configure-to-order environments

  • Consignment of finished goods at customer location for later invoicing

  • Streamlined shop order and purchase order release process

    • Convert MRP generated planned orders to shop orders based on release date, item, order type, and other filter criteria

    • Consolidate planned orders for purchased items and convert to purchase orders with a single click

  • Over 150 standard reports that can be easily customized to meet your specific business requirements.

ADVANTAGES

 

There are also some differentiating factors that set Catalyst apart from other systems, namely:

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  • Attribute-based inventory records*

    • The release status, retest and expiration dates are integrated components of each inventory record. This eliminates the need to maintain virtual quarantine or hold locations to prevent the material from being used prior to release.

  • Batch processing

    • In batch production environments, yield losses for lower-level items often result in smaller batch sizes for upper-level items. These shop orders can be closed so MRP will not consider the remaining quantity, but MRP will still generate planned orders for the remaining quantity unless upper-level demand is also adjusted for the yield loss. This represents a potentially time-consuming task especially for deep bill-of-material structures. By selecting the ‘Ignore remaining quantity?’ option, Catalyst MRP will ignore the remaining quantity on partially received shop orders so that planned orders are not generated for the remaining quantity and passed down as dependent demand.

  • Material Allocations

    • Catalyst supports allocating materials to shop orders and customer orders to increase the visibility of inventory available for use on other orders.

  • Finite Capacity Scheduling

    • The capacity can be reviewed with both infinite and finite capacity loading. The finite capacity scheduling engine considers capacity and tooling constraints and also schedules operators into the generated production schedule.

  • Multi-level lot tracking

    • A lot number can be traced from receipt through shipment with full detail regarding the timing and usage of material.

  • Intuitive navigation

    • The system is designed for intuitive and easy navigation. This reduces training requirements and results in a lower, less costly learning curve.

  • Easy customization and ad hoc reporting capabilities

    • Catalyst includes the best of both worlds - the front-end database is based in Microsoft Access to allow easy customization and development of custom queries and reports and the back-end database is based in Microsoft SQL Server to maintain your company data in a robust and reliable database. Using Access for your development needs reduces the reliance on costly consultants and leverages the internal expertise within your company to get the most out of the data that resides in the system.

 
* Pharmaceutical Edition only

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