The MAX® Software Suite Overview

The MAX® Software Suite Overview

MAX Core Modules

*Bill of Materials is one of the cornerstones upon which the MAX system is built. The screens and reports offered in this module enable you to build and maintain BOMs in one visual workspace with all relevant information at your fingertips.

*Costing with Multiple Cost Sets enables you to track cost variances for material costs, labor costs and purchase costs by part, order number, or by workcenter. Accountants and auditors can use the full range of reports and inquiries offered to analyze cost performance by comparing actual costs with planned costs. Begin controlling your company’s costs and performance today by knowing ly how much material and labor every order, part and operation takes.

*Extract Transform Load (ETL) provides the time tested reliability of the MAX Load / Unload Utilities in a MAX for Windows module built to move MAX customers into the future. By developing MAX ETL on the .NET platform, MAX has leveraged the 10-year Microsoft partnership with . MAX ETL is the MAX for Windows equivalent of the classic DOS MAX Load and Unload files utilities.

*Inventory Control enables you to track and maintain inventory balances for each part you stock – including finished goods, assemblies, component parts, and raw materials – so you’ll know where inventory is located and how many parts are on hand. With better control and visibility, you’ll benefit from increased inventory turnover and improved inventory accuracy.

*Master Scheduling plans production of finished goods, generates forecast orders, and maintains customer demand, thereby creating a consistent and realistic production plan that drives all aspects of your manufacturing and purchasing operations.

*Material Requirements Planning (MRP) balances the supply and demand for all component parts needed to satisfy your Master Schedule.

*Purchasing Control allows you to create and print your purchase orders, track purchased materials, and maintain solid vendor information and accurate cash requirements. You’ll know ly what a part costs, when you can get it, and from which approved vendors.

*Repetitive Manufacturing provides the capability to receive a finished item and “backflush” all of the component items required to build the final assembly in a single transaction. This is ideal for high volume environments or those that are practicing Just-In-Time (JIT) techniques, as no shop order is required – thereby eliminating time-consuming order processing and providing a paperless environment.

*Sales Order Processing helps you enter sales orders, ship and invoice product, and satisfy customer inquiries immediately.

*Shop Floor Execution lets you create shop orders, track work-in-process (WIP), maintain work center information, and analyze shortages and backlogs.

*System Manager is the gateway to the capabilities within MAX. It manages users’ rights to modules and to specific functions within the modules that are required for the fulfillment of their daily duties.






The MAX® Software Suite Overview


MAX Expansion Modules

In addition to MAX’s Core functionality, a full complement of expansion modules is available so you can configure MAX to accommodate your unique business requirements.

*Advanced Shipping streamlines the process associated with allocating, picking, and shipping orders. Finished goods inventory can be allocated to sales orders based upon priorities you control. This module offers integration with EDI.

Alert Manager automates the data reporting and exception message handling which are inevitable in your business.

Purge and Archive Manager allows you to retain historical data online for real-time lookup using standard MAX applications, allowing for inclusion of both live and historical data in custom reports.

Clippership is integrated shipping management software with multi-carrier compliance supporting rating, routing, bar code labeling, electronic manifesting, and tracking of major carriers, including UPS, FedEX, Airborne, DHL, etc.

*Data Collection for MAX with total integration of MRP and bar coding gives you optimal control of shop and material transactions from receiving to shipping. Data Collection for MAX includes Inventory, Labor, Shop Floor, and Shipping functionality.

*Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) provides inbound and outbound transaction processing to and from the MAX system and uses customer and shipment information in your existing MAX database to transact B2B e-commerce with your suppliers and customers.

Engineering Change Order Manager helps you control the planning, process, documentation and implementation of your engineering change orders. ECO Manager includes tools for defining all parts, bills of material and documents needed to make a complete engineering change with a minimum of effort. ECO Manager provides real-time access to inventory, vendor, sales, and transaction history records, synchronizing the engineering change process with MAX to ensure accurate tracking.

Feature/Option Configurator gives you more logistical control over your configurable parts, making your operation more flexible and helping to increase customer satisfaction. Although you may build a “standard” product, you can configure it to match specific customer requirements with a variety of available features and options.

Finite Capacity Scheduling is a detailed, interactive scheduling system that takes individual orders and determines specifically when and where each step will be performed. It is used to complement the capacity planning and master scheduling functionality within MAX.

*Lot and Serial Tracking allows you to easily trace serial numbers and lots through the entire system for complete visibility as to “where used,” including sub-assemblies or ingredients that go into a batch.

Labor Tracking is an online job tracking system that allows you to track actual work performed for specific work order operations. MAX Labor Tracking allows the computer to act as a time clock, resulting in more accurate run and setup times. Labor Tracking helps you identify direct and indirect labor or machine hours and can interface with your company’s payroll system.


MAX Expansion Modules (cont’d)

*Manufacturer’s Part Control allows Engineering to define precise part relationships that specify ly which manufacturers’ parts fill a requirement. MAX Manufacturer’s Part Control lets you assign and control relationships between your internal MAX part identifiers and manufacturer’s part numbers, allowing you to control not only your product structure but also your inventory at the bill of materials level. MAX displays manufacturer’s part information to Purchasing so that competitively priced supply meets demand. Guarantee that finished goods match the product specifications using MAX Manufacturer’s Part Control.

*Quoting & Estimating integrates with MAX to provide the capability to manage, copy, and edit quotes so you can turn them into sales orders with the click of a mouse once you win the business.

Advanced Forecasting helps to assemble and consolidate forecasts, and then applies statistical forecasting techniques so that “pie in the sky” forecasts will ultimately resemble reality. These modified forecasts are then compared with actual bookings, and the consumed (or net) forecast orders are loaded directly into MAX – automatically if you like! Then to see how well you’ve done, it will compare the plan versus actual with user-defined criteria so you can adjust future activities to build the right product at the right time.

Multicurrency provides the ability to input sales or purchase orders in a foreign currency – that of your customer’s or vendor’s currency if you’re international. The foreign currency amount prints on the sales acknowledgement, invoice and purchase order, giving customers and vendors the information they need. Costs and prices within MAX are captured and reported in your base currency so confusion is not a problem.

*Physical Inventory helps MAX customers conduct an accurate, coordinated physical inventory program and the increasingly critical final audit trail report with posted variances by part number. The PIM windows, reports, and related programs offer a formal method of printing numbered physical inventory tags, collecting details of the physical inventory count, and updating the inventory data in MAX after verifying that this information is up-to-date for printing audit reports.

*Subcontract Processing tracks and manages the movement of material if they need to be sent out for processing. Subcontract Processing can either be set up as a level in your Bill of Material or as a step in your routing.

*Planning & Simulation allows for a simulated sales order to be entered and view the impact on the material requirements with the addition of that order without actually entering the sales order.

Warranty Tracking allows you to issue Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA) numbers to customers for product to be returned, track the receipt of the RMA, determine if service is billable, and monitor expenses associated with the repair effort.




The MAX® Software Suite Overview

Microsoft Great Plains Accounting

Microsoft Great Plains is the industry acclaimed accounting software suite that integrates with MAX. Their foundation core modules include General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Bank Reconciliation and FRx Reporting. A full range of accounting capabilities is also available.

Collections Management helps facilitate and track collections and the collection process, including scheduling calls and personnel and building collection histories for clients.

Fixed Asset Management helps you make better decisions and put assets to the best use within your organization by enabling you to quickly and accurately record, track, depreciate, and analyze your company’s assets.

Great Plains Multicurrency Management provides a flexible solution that complies with FASB-52 standards for accounting and reporting of multi-currency transactions, and it effectively meets the needs of the international business community.

Human Resources is designed to give you total control over every important personnel application. Human Resources gives you the ability to store, analyze, and integrate all your employee information in one central system. It tracks all aspects of the employee life cycle – from application to termination of the employment contract.

Multidimensional Analysis offers the power of unlimited analysis of financial information any way you like, without adding complexity to your chart of accounts.

Payroll offers In-depth control, processing power, and security for managing your sensitive payroll information.

Also available are:

Payroll Connect (GL link to ADP PC/Payroll for Windows)
Payroll Direct Deposit
Federal Magnetic Media

Note: A full complement of accounting related capabilities is currently available, with new ones being added regularly. Please inquire with respect to your specific needs for the latest information.




The MAX® Software Suite Overview

MAX Tools and Utilities

Accountant’s Toolkit:

Customer Hold Reports is for the MAX Company that uses Credit Limits and Aging Periods to determine if product can be shipped to customers.

From/To Change Analyzer is designed to extract data from Transaction History with Accounts assigned for easier reconciliation and analysis.

Inventory Balance Analyzer provides the ability to calculate the on hand inventory balances as of two specified dates.

Consignment Orders provides a method for tracking inventory shipped to a customer on consignment. Items shipped remain in inventory and have full visibility in either a customer specific or a generic consignment inventory location.

*Crystal Reports Writer allows you to create custom reports. This powerful, easy to use application contains a wide range of built-in tools for report design and data analysis. A Report Pak, consisting of more than 15 special MAX reports, is included.

*Event Manager allows you to outline specific events within your ODBC compliant data source that need monitoring. If the event occurs, or passes, it can trigger multiple responses, ranging from automating e-Synergy workflow, to sending an email, pager message or even generating reports.

Forecast MAX helps you assemble and consolidate forecasts and then applies statistical forecasting techniques so that “pie in the sky” forecasts can ultimately resemble reality.

Lean Tools: Making your deployment of MAX “leaner” has never been easier with these custom developed tools applying lean principles under the most demanding real world operations.

Backflush by Operation: In Lean Manufacturing, we strive to “flatten” the Bill Of Material, which reduces the number of work orders we need to create and eliminates the corresponding stocking levels of inventory. The Backflush by Operation tool facilitates the flattening process.

Consolidated Planning and Pick: With decreased lead times, your planning process needs to look at smaller, more customer-focused time frames. Planning and releasing the next day’s or week’s schedule requires more specialized tools.

Lean Vouchering: Use a Management by Exception approach to reduce and streamline the workload of your Accounting staff. Let the tool identify the significant few issues and automate the mundane processing of the rest.

Supplier Kanban: Some of the stated goals of Lean Manufacturing are to eliminate waste and make value flow through the organization. In order to eliminate waste, we remove actions that do not add value to our operations. When the need is recognized, we want to order material from our Supplier in the fewest steps possible, while maintaining a record of our activity.

MAXUpdate is a programmer’s reference to the Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) that contain the low-level code for the MAX Manufacturing Software package.

MAX Tools and Utilities (cont’d)

Payroll Integration is Ideal for those MAX customers using Labor Tracking and Payroll and affords the user the ability to reduce the costs associated with expensive payroll processing services and to realize ROI in as little as 6 months.

Planner’s Toolkit:

ABC Analyzer Function is an easy to use tool for using transaction activity or On Hand values and user-defined parameters to assign part master class codes, Cycle Count Parameters, and MRP Order Policies.

Pick Pro allows you to maintain routing Pick entries based on the BOM of the selected part.

BOM Analyzer provides an easy way to explode multi-level bills of material from a list of parts and quantities into a flat file for easy reporting. The data is extracted into a single MS Access table.

MRP Simulator Function allows you to run a simulated MRP using sales orders and forecasts as demand and fully exploding all component requirements. The application will extract and update an Access database with the summarized data for easy reporting.

Sales & Marketing Toolkit:

MAX Market Analyzer provides a user-friendly method for running numerous sales reports from MAX Invoice History. There are 40+ Crystal Reports, which are included.

Customer Inquiry allows you to search your MAX or Consignment data using a variety of criteria. You also have four selection operators to customize, narrow or expand your search: None, Equals, Starts With, and Contains. This is very helpful in finding a specific customer or identifying customer groups.

MAX Packing List will allow multiple Packing Lists to be created before an Invoice is posted. This allows for shipments, which may for example be going both express and standard.

Customer Based Pricing allows the MAX user to set up and assign Customer Types in Excel, and then assign Customers by MAX Customer ID to those types. Customer Based Pricing then updates each customer record in MAX as required.

*Accounting Tool Kit, Drillbacks is improving the integration and enhanced reporting and analysis between MAX and Great Plains Dynamics.