Consumer goods include products and services that are bought for personal and household use.  Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) is a term used to describe frequently purchased consumer goods. FMCG produce high levels of sales within a short period of time, such as soap powder, CDs, cigarettes and toiletries.  FMCG secure more permanent brand visibility than goods that are bought less frequently.  Core consumers see the brand names of FMCG every time they open their refrigerator doors or go to their pantries.

Consumer goods companies design, manufacture and market apparel, cleaning products, hand and power tools, home furniture, house wares, sporting goods, linens and appliances.  Consumer packaged goods (CPG) are consumable goods such as food and beverages, footwear and apparel, tobacco and cleaning products.  CPG are things that get used up and must be replaced frequently, as opposed to durable items that people keep for a long time, such as cars and furniture.

Pressures in the consumer goods industry mount daily.  The apparel segment of the consumer goods industry is a prime example.  Apparel manufacturers face unpredictable fashion trends, short lifecycles, large numbers of size, color and style variations and long procurement lead times, all of which make it difficult to forecast demand.  All of these industry pressures result in stock-outs of popular items and excess stock of slow movers.

Although the CPG industry has historically been slow to invest in new technology, it is increasingly turning to computerized and Web-based applications for customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP).  Today, the successful consumer goods companies are separating themselves from the rest by adopting supply chain technologies to cut costs and grow profits to deal with marketplace challenges. Technology solutions synchronize the supply chain and provide the foundation for overcoming the many challenges that manufacturers face.

Key Challenges

• Discount retailing and private-label products are cutting into branded consumer products pricing.
• Increased global competition has determined a tougher economic trend where each new brand costs more to develop and market, but has a shorter life cycle.
• The rising cost of raw materials, especially petrochemicals for containers, packaging and production, contributes to decreasing profit margins.
• Rising oil prices has made delivery and transportation of consumer goods more expensive.
• Big box retailers demand increased levels of efficiency from manufacturers and demand reduced prices.
• The proliferation of SKUs in micro-segmented markets complicates forecasting and inventory management.
• Off-shore manufacturing increases lead-time and variability throughout the network, causing companies to hold higher inventories to protect against uncertainty. 
• Consumer goods companies must recognize which customers generate the most profits from which products.

How SYSPRO Can Help

Inventory Management (Materials and Finished Product)
SYSPRO Inventory Optimizer provides visibility into the status of all forms of inventory across the inventory flow cycle. Quantities of raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods inventories are automatically updated and forecasts adjusted in accordance with the organizations inventory management and optimization policies. Planners therefore have the ability to manage demand fluctuations with superior responsiveness. Buyers have ability to plan purchasing to ensure a high level of service. Full visibility is provided of all stock levels per warehouse, such as Quantity on hand, on order (PO and WIP), available, allocated to Sales Orders, on Back Order, allocated to WIP, in transit, in inspection, future free. At any point in the system an Available to Promise query can be performed to establish what stock is available or when stock will become available.

Returns Management
The RMA module has been designed to assist in the returning/exchanging of merchandise. Once the customer notifies you of the intent to return a product, you issue an RMA with the applicable reason for the return and/or invoice numbers that pertain to that product.

At the point of issuing the RMA, you are able to cross-ship a replacement item to the customer. This may be used in the case where the customer cannot return the defective item without first having a replacement item.

Once the merchandise is returned, with the receiving stage, various actions may be taken, creating a work order for the faulty product to be repaired; you may receive the product back into your warehouse and credit the customer, exchange the product, etc. If the stock item that is being returned is part of a bill of materials, on exchanging the product, the user has the option of restocking the components.

The following are examples where the RMA module would be of benefit:

• The incorrect product was sent to the customer, and the customer needs to be credited.
• The correct product was sent to the customer, but the product is faulty and needs to be replaced or repaired.
• The customer was not happy with the product and needs to be credited.
• The product was partially faulty, and the customer cannot ship it back without causing a problem in their day-to-day operations and you need to ship another part.
• The customer will ship back the faulty product within a specified time frame; otherwise they will be billed for the replacement product.

Work in Progress
The Work in Progress module enables you to accurately control costs of work orders currently in progress. Material usage and labor can be posted in real time and in batch mode. It also enables variance reporting to be produced between estimated costs and actual costs of each job. Work orders may be added for stocked items (with a bill of materials), stocked items without a bill of materials or non-stocked items. These work orders can create a bill of jobs for all relevant sub-assemblies down the BOM chain. Labor transactions can be posted through kit issues, manually or imported into the system from a data collection interface. Material allocations can be issued to a job through kit issues or manually and optionally allow for the substitution of a material allocation when performing kit issues.

Advanced Planning and Scheduling
The SYSPRO APS system provides a graphical view of the shop floor in real-time and measures productivity at the closest point to manufacture. It provides a simple and efficient means of coordinating the supply chain through better advanced planning, scheduling and visibility over production. A concise, tactical overview of production schedules and workloads by work center, day, and job enables managers to more easily identify potential problem areas and schedule jobs in accordance with available resources and promised delivery dates.

Product Configurator
The Product Configurator module provides a rules-based configurator that will primarily help companies efficiently process products that are manufactured-to-order, assembled-to-order or sold in many configurations. It can also help reduce configuration errors, while reducing the involvement of experts in routine transactions.

It allows a non-technical person to create a viable customized product for a sales order, estimate or quote. A configuration must be defined, specifying the components/operations which can be used to create a product. Once a configuration has been defined, the Product Configuration Wizard can be used to create an item from that configuration. The configuration can be set up to create a stocked parent part, non-stocked parent or both. Once the parent has been defined, a job, bill of materials structure and routing or a combination of both can be created to manufacture the parent. If a stocked or non-stocked parent has been created using the configurator, it can be used in the same way as other stocked items. A configuration consists of selection criteria, options, components and operations.

Requirements Planning
The Requirements Planning module is the focus of the manufacturing and material resource planning system. The objective of requirements planning is to create realistic purchasing and production schedules, optimize stock holdings and identify capacity constraints in a multi-site, multi-warehouse environment. The module assists with the planning of materials and production capacity required to meet demand and identifies levels of usage of critical resources for rough-cut capacity planning.  It allows for the easy creation of build schedules from Master Production Schedule (MPS) suggestions and the shop floor, and it suggests purchasing, production and transfer schedules to satisfy demand. Features of this module include variable planning horizons, dynamic capacity profiling and load leveling. This is a bucketless system. The calculation is regenerative and infinite, and can be fed into Forward Finite Scheduling.

Distribution Requirements Planning
Distribution Requirements Planning in SYSPRO is designed to optimize the movement of inventory in a supply chain environment so that demands can be met effectively and efficiently without relying on excessive stock holdings. If the Material Requirements Planning module is installed, a comprehensive view of the supply chain for each item is available. Companies in either the wholesale or manufacturing sectors, which have regional demand fed by one or more supply warehouses or manufacturing plants would typically use Distribution Requirements Planning. The integration between SYSPRO's Inventory, Purchase Orders, Sales Orders, Bills of Materials, Work in Progress and Material Requirements Planning modules provides a comprehensive view up and down the supply chain.

Distribution Requirements Planning allows for the Requirements planning module to suggest Supply Chain Transfers from one warehouse to another, instead of suggesting a Purchase Order or a Works Order. This is done by setting up a chain of Supplying Warehouses, so that the suggested transfer will be from the closest warehouse. This results in stock being moved from oversupplied warehouses to those with a demand.

Goods in Transit
The Goods in Transit system provides a mechanism for greater management control over stock items that are in the process of being transferred between warehouses. It achieves this by monitoring warehouses transfers and supply chain transfers. Warehouse transfers are generated using the Inventory Movements program, where the transfer of an item from a source warehouse generates a detailed record of the transaction. Stock is depleted from the source warehouse at the time of confirming each line of the transfer. At the receiving warehouse, a review process with extensive selection criteria enables you to control the receipt of this stock. Supply chain transfers are generated using the S/O Entry program. The capture of a supply chain transfer order enables you to reserve stock for transfer at a later point in time (as opposed to an immediate transfer out catered for by Inventory Movements). The primary purpose of the Goods in Transit system is to manage the regular transfer of stock between multiple warehouses.

Customer Relationship Management
The SYSPRO Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system lets users track and manage all customer and supplier touch points. Customer correspondence, status, vendor relationships, marketing campaigns, service issues, product returns, warranty and repair histories, quote and sales order information are monitored and recorded, providing a 360 degree view of internal or external business relationships. SYSPRO CRM enables sales, marketing and customer support operations to work collaboratively to achieve total customer satisfaction.

SYSPRO CRM enables manufacturers to increase revenues and client satisfaction through optimal client management. In addition it enables the manufacturer to decrease order cycle times and deliver product when required. Real time information in CRM enables you to proactively anticipate the requirements of your clients.

Kit Sales
The Single Level Bill of Materials in SYSPRO's Sales Order module provides the facility to sell items in a Kit form with specified mandatory and optional components. The Bill of Materials module is required to define relationship between the finished (parent) part and the components so as to determine the cost and selling prices and whether the stocking levels of the parent or the component are affected. Companies in the wholesale or manufacturing sectors and who sell items in kit form would typically use the Single Level Bill of Materials facility. The integration between SYSPRO's Inventory, Sales Orders, and Bills of Materials modules provides full visibility of all inventory transactions.

Landed Cost Tracking
The Landed Cost Tracking module is designed to assist the tracking of imported goods and the establishment of an improved estimate of imported goods' overall cost. It also aids the calculation of a better actual cost at which to receive the goods, and the provision of an actual cost comparison to the various estimates made during the procurement cycle, together with the maintenance of an actual cost archive.

Dangerous Goods Text
In industries where customers need to be notified of potential hazardous materials, the Dangerous Goods Text can be very useful. Within SYSPRO Dangerous Goods Text can be associated with the potentially hazardous Inventory items and optionally printed/attached to the Sales Order documentation.

Work in Progress Inspection
Manufacturing Inspection allowing for inspection, rework, scrap or receiving in as an alternate lower grade product or into a "seconds" warehouse.

Backflushing
The Backflushing function in Inventory Movements is designed to record the manufacture of items without using a Work in Progress job. By using the manufactured item's bill of materials to determine the material and labor charges, backflushing enables you, in one process, to issue the materials from inventory, apply standard labor costs, and receive the finished good back into stock. This function is particularly relevant in situations where the benefits derived from creating a job to track the activity on the job floor do not justify the cost of processing all the data normally required for a job. Companies manufacturing items which use a production line to transform the raw material into a finished product in an extremely short time e.g. manufacturing electrical components, plastic ware, steel nails and fencing would typically use backflushing The integration with SYSPRO's Bill of Materials module permits full visibility through all inventory transactions.

Forecasting
The Forecasting module provides a simple, easy to use forecasting management tool. Based on the available history it suggests future stock replenishment, with the option of removing 'outliers' and enables manual adjustment to the history. Manual adjustments might be needed in terms of market intelligence or unusual demand. Users can choose from a number of predefined Algorithms or a Competition method can be chosen in which the system will select the best algorithm based on the ability of each of the algorithms to forecast the most recent period(s) (i.e. it will choose the mathematical formula best suited to an item's historical sales and from that predict future sales). Some of the algorithms can be tuned by the user by changing parameters such as smoothing factors. A comprehensive Pareto (A, B, C) analyzer is built-in together with a degree of forecast approval workflow. In addition a set of reports, both tabular and graphical, in format allow for easy reference and the ability to delve into the forecast detail.