KeyedIn has unveiled an automated assistant that will allow users of its manufacturing ERP solution to gather data at the touch of a button.
Unveiled at FABTECH 2018, the Manufacturing Assistant will allow a manufacturing company to speed up the creation of quotes and estimates. This should ease the creation of new parts. It does this by providing users with relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) and easing access to historical data pertaining to customers, parts and vendors.
“Manufacturers are often challenged by the lack of 360-degree insights while interacting with vendors and customers, including lack of visibility into current supply and demand for manufactured parts, historical order and quote information, and complete part history,” said Dave Lechleitner, Director of Product Marketing for KeyedIn.
“Instead of shuffling through paper and spreadsheets to find the information they need, we make all of this information available in real-time and help manufacturers to better service their customers while providing improved insights into their business.”
If you look at the three areas the assistant focuses on, KeyedIn defines the software as assisting users by:
With Parts the assistant provides information on current inventory on hand. Data such as time phased supply/demand, sales, purchases, previous orders, and previous estimates. This allows for users to create more accurate estimates, plan work orders for finished parts and plan purchase orders.
Customer info such as contact email and phone numbers, opportunities, quotes, orders, and shipments information becomes readily available. This allows salespeople and estimators to more easily manage customer contacts.
The supply chain is enhanced with the availability of Vendor data. Again, information like contact email and phone numbers, purchase orders and receipts. With this data, purchasing or materials managers can better manage vendor relationships.
The Manufacturing Assistant has been made available as an integrated component of KeyedIn’s cloud-based Manufacturing ERP solution.
What does this mean
There is a trend for ERP companies to embrace natural language interfaces. A few are also starting to introduce voice enabled automation assistants, though the KeyedIn bot does not appear to be one of those. The assistant is answers questions such as “Have I made this part before, and if so, how did I price it?” However it does appear to populate quotations with this information, but rather respond in a similar way to a colleague. While useful this won’t actually help automate the process, but rather provide the use with better information. Where will KeyedIn take this next?
