???Small Shop Needs ERP Software Advice????

[P&W Machine]

First off let me say hello to everyone I stumbled across this place and seems like a very informative place.

My problem being that our little shop has grown a bit and some of our bigger customers are requiring us to incorporate some kind of inventory and scheduling software into our operation. I have been looking at different ERP systems but I have no clue as to what We need.

We are a small shop 7 machines total, and 5 employees. I would like to incorporate something easy to use but can do it all?? I dont want to spend much more then 1-2k. Give me some Ideas what you folks are using in smaller shops???

[asuratman]

Hello,
I work for a company that use microsoft project and MS access. It is good enough and powerful. We make drilling rig equipment, plenty parts and 10 peoples plus contractors. Oracle very expensive, 1500 usd/person 5 days just for training.

[posix]

well with your budget and the number of employees the "E" in erp doesn't make sense. the "inventory" and "scheduling" is really the most basic building block of any erp system so it's a bit weird for them to ask you for an erp that can do it. it would be very difficult finding one that doesn't. what your clients will most certainly want (maybe don't know it yet or haven't mentioned it) is some sort of common interface for taking orders from them without human intervention. but your budget definitely won't stretch to that. it wouldn't even cover the hardware needed to run an erp system and hardware is usually less than 30% of the overall upfront price.

what you could do is have a look at a hosted rent-a-erp system where you pay a monthly (or annual) fee to run your system on somebody elses systems.

[P&W Machine]

The customer is not requiring an ERP system, just a system in place to track orders inventory and such.

Ive been looking at this system for about 1200 bucks.

http://www.realtrac.com/index.html

[harryn]

I am not sure if this is enough for you or not, but I used MYOB for a while. It is very good for tracking inventory down to the sub assy level. I don't know about its use for WIP.

http://www.myob-us.com/premier/features/

[GOLETABRIAN]

http://www.dbamanufacturing.com/

[yoopertool]

There are open source programs out there you can get for free. Do a quick search on sourceforge.net.