Supply chain management application for midsized equipment manufacturing company?

you can go through this below link of SAP-SCM, for midsized organizations.
also please call the representatives to start with and understand the sutaible modules as per your company's need.
Budget is also main criteria before finalising, so you have to take an idea about SAP SCM and its use.

http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/scm/index.epx

Regards
Gaurav

Hi,
I have had great experiences with the software of JDA (ex-Manugistics). You'll find it is extremely flexible and can be suited to many needs. Especially the forecasting module is exceptionally strong.
I would definitely check it out as my experiences are very positive and even though the software is not cheap, we have found that it was earning its money back quite rapidly.

If you are interested in more, let me know. If you can give a little bit more on your actual processes, i will be able to give a more detailed advise.
Marc

I agree with Tom...You would be better off with new components but leave MSFT in place. Your accounting, payroll, order management and procurement can't really be that bad. It is likely the forecasting and inventory components that are the weak points. You'd be better off leaving as much alone as you can and find those pieces that need polishing.

Before starting a search, it might be useful to first determine what you might be searching for.
In assessing this situation, it might be worthwhile to first qualify and quantify what, specifically, the current system doesn’t do or doesn’t do well.
For each instance you mention – order processing, inventory, procurement and forecasting, we should identify the people who literally use the current applications day-to-day; these are the only people who can tell us what it’s like to get their jobs done with the tools available to them.
Best case, this would mean a series of ‘shadowing’ exercises, ideally using veteran analysts who can accurately capture each person’s interaction with the current system. This can sometimes be a delicate process, since day-to-day users may be uncomfortable having someone else document how they do their job. (This is an altogether separate subject that deserves additional attention, further down the road.)
The goal is to document and stratify the witnessed tasks and activities each person requires to complete their respective assignments. To make this assessment process easier (and, as important, less threatening to the individual users), it is often useful to start with a list of all the ‘things’ that person must get done in an allotted period of time. (e.g. “I have to pull the receipt variance report by 7:30am and get it reconciled to the P.O.s and turned into Ellen by 9:30am.)
Through multiple iterations across the staff of the department in question, as well as RACI stakeholders, a pattern and rhythm will typically emerge, helping us to understand the data flow as well as the process flow currently in place.
This is also the point at which we should be able to stratify the processes. In general this can look something like this:
• Processes that clearly support delivery of the desired end work product (e.g. a report)
• Processes that perform the desired function but do so at a pace slower than required
• Processes whose completion relies on opaque operations not immediately apparent or visible to the person charged with delivery
• Processes that require use of ‘tribal knowledge’
• Processes that are needed to produce a desired end result but do not exist in the current application

Kyle,

I have gotten a lot of good insight into SCP developments from a research company called Aberdeen (http://aberdeen.com/). They have a TON of reports, most of them free, and I do recall that in the past year or two they did an evaluation of supply chain planning applications, from stand-alone best in breed to full blown ERPs.

Kyle,

I have been primarily associated with JD Edwards and is quite impressed by the flexibility to suit different business environments for small and mid-size businesses. Taking into your current ERP System, JD Edwards Enterprise One will the solution you should looking for. Can get the details at http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/jd-edwards-enterpriseone/index....

But indeed, no ERP System by itself is meant to meet all the needs. The key is understanding of one's business environment and needs. One surely need to re-evaluate its existing system, either there is drastic business process change or business has outgrown the software capabilities. One of the key point that I have noticed with ERP system is the fact that they hardly undergo any continuous incremental change process throughout their entire life cycle even within a continuous changing business environment. Therefore, over the time they really get too outdated and modifying existing system seems to be a much bigger task than implementing new system. There need to be an ongoing ERP System Change process in place to keep ERP system up to date with the business environment.

Of the ERP products Microsoft offers you can scale from low end to high (Microsoft Dynamics GP to Microsoft Dynamics AX on high end). You get an investment credit when you buy one Microsoft ERP product if you later want to move to a higher version. These can handle any enterprise needs, the full range

I think you should take a look at not only Microsoft solutions but also other potential solutions that Microsoft partners can provide. You can request a customized demo to see if they can meet your demands and also offer new opportunities. That way you don't need to change the entire system that your company's employees are used to working on.Here is a Microsoft partner who focuses on manufacturing:
http://olive-3.com/solutions/request_demo.aspx
Good luck with your search!

I'm with ATS Logistics Services. We are the largest heavy equipment transporation company in North America. We ship CAT equipment to largest transformers. We have worked with many of the systems on the market. We don't sell systems, but we use them because we many times we manage the freight in our customers sytems. We have found the least expensive but has the best capabilities is NTE. The NTE system fits heavy equipment shipping extremly well. We are now utlizing it for several of our customer to manage their freight. Let me know if you want to learn more: John Coffield 320-258-6587 johncof@atsinc.com

Why hasn't MSFT fit your needs? Is the forecasting baseline childlike? Are you using causal variables(ie price, promotion, holidays, events, # of outlets, GNP, etc.) to help guide the process? If the first step in the SC process is no good then the rest of the process is no good. You should definitely consider a pure forecasting application for a best of breed instead of the one size fits all approach of the womb to tomb systems put forth by the ERP vendors. These ERP systems take a list of models and "fit" the data instead of having a system that builds a model that is appropriate for the data and better forecast.