Hardly any other branch of industry is subjected to more extreme levels of pressure than the automotive supply industry. This is caused by ever-increasing (global) competition, price pressure from automotive manufacturers and rising material prices, amongst other things. A peculiar feature of this production industry is the prevalence of needs-based delivery of parts to customers. This is referred to as "just-in-time" or often even "just-in-sequence" delivery.
In the future, ERP systems (in industry-specific versions) will still form the heart of in-house digital infrastructures for the supplier industry. However, ongoing digitalisation means they will be supported in the future by many different, partly autonomous programs, sensors, actuators, apps and platforms . They create an enormous potential for optimisation in almost all process areas; these include tender preparation using completely integrated Office systems, direct access to external production and materials provision, active lifecycle management of manufactured components and the associated new service and maintenance requirements.
Modern ERP systems, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Microsoft Dynamics AX, enable you to start laying the foundation for your company's digital future today, secure in the knowledge that you will still have your finger on the pulse tomorrow.
COSMO CONSULT is focused on the topics of tomorrow. We are happy to advise you at any time and to work with you to develop your individual vision for the future. Research projects with the Fraunhofer Institute are helping to make the Internet of Things accessible and available to SMEs easily and cost-effectively. We are guided here by your specifications.
Already being in a position to implement Industry 4.0 in the cloud is not important. What is important, however, is already knowing which systems present forward-looking scenarios and are able to facilitate the integration of Industry 4.0 into the current system landscape.
With COSMO CONSULT, you have a partner at your side who will deal with these issues and provide you with advice and practical help
The advantages of seamless integration of Microsoft Office are obvious: you can work across program boundaries without media interruptions. For example, you can easily make bulk data changes in Microsoft Excel by exporting tables to Excel, editing them there and importing them back to the ERP system. This import undergoes ERP-system plausibility checks, so that Microsoft Dynamics only receives valid data.
This results in numerous interactions between the Microsoft worlds. Document archiving using Microsoft SharePoint technology is just one of these functions. It is an intuitive document management system based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Microsoft Dynamics AX. The "document box" integrated into the ERP system serves as a central filing location for all kinds of documents. File documents easily using drag & drop. You can also initiate, send and archive postings immediately (as PDFs) directly from Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics AX. Interdepartmental project work is simply mapped as an Intranet system using SharePoint.
If you take a look at all the innovations made in the automotive industry, the overwhelming majority of these fundamental innovations have come from the supply industry. What's more, suppliers are also taking responsibility for more and more production and development services. Around 78 percent of added value is provided by suppliers – a trend that is on the rise.
Shorter and shorter production cycles and constantly changing guidelines demand a huge amount of flexibility from ERP software. All departments must coordinate seamlessly with one another at all times, from product development and procurement through to production itself. The integration of standardised EDI processes into the ERP software is another key element of the automotive supply industry solution.
When looking for new ERP software, automotive suppliers need more than a software solution that caters only for the production environment. An ERP system in the automotive supply industry must demonstrate a high level of standardisation. The standards and business processes surrounding EDI form an integral part of such systems, as do the special custom processes used by the major automotive manufacturers. The data mapper integrated in ERP converts the different data formats such as VDA, ODETTE, SAP IDOC, XML, PHOENIX, TRADACOM, ANSI X12 etc. This data mapper makes additional converters (for example from Seeburger, Crossgate or stratEDI) superfluous.
The ability to manage outsourced production is also vitally important for many suppliers today. After all, it is only possible to control production in all plants from a central location and enable automatic exchange of data between the various plants if the software covers multiple sites.
The driving force behind any efficient ERP solution that perfectly maps business processes is a defined approach to supply chain management (transparent tracking, planning and control of the relevant supply chains, including order processing and budget planning).
As the world's leading Microsoft Dynamics ERP partner and certified industry experts, COSMO CONSULT provides an industry solution for the automotive sector that have been fully tested and certified by Microsoft. The industry solution is based on the latest Microsoft Dynamics technology and is seamlessly integrated into the standard software.
Furthermore, we have been working closely with customers in the supply industry for many years now to ensure that our industry software and consulting services meet the actual requirements of this industry. Our many successful projects are proof of our expertise. So you can be sure that our industry solutions have been tested down to the very last detail and given a seal of approval by the real experts—the users.
All our solutions are optionally available as a leasing model from the cloud. This makes it completely unnecessary for you to develop a complex in-house infrastructure. Instead you can obtain all services on a monthly rental basis. Only what you actually use will be charged – without high initial investments.
By working with you, we know that we can find the ideal concept to meet your specific requirements. For more detailed information, take a closer look at our software for the automotive supply industry.
You may also be interested in one of our numerous cross-industry add-on solutions such as EDI, quality management, vendor rating, business intelligence or mobile warehouse management.
Get in touch with us to discuss how COSMO CONSULT can help you to get more output of your business. We look forward to hearing from you.