Let’s say you’re a small, discrete manufacturer with plants and inventory scattered across the globe. You need an MRP system to track work orders, inventory, and inventory turn levels, but the last thing you want is to implement a new on-premise system that requires lots of expensive IT infrastructure and support. What do you do?
If you’re Xtellus, an 80-person maker of equipment used in fiber optic routing equipment, you opt for Rootstock, a software-as-a-service-based MRP offering that launched last spring. Operating as an application in the NetSuite Inc. cloud environment, Rootstock MRP for NetSuite offers links with NetSuite sales order and demand management, and allows manufacturers to plan material and labor needs based on demand. The service also supports production engineering, change control, WIP tracking, real-time valuation, cost control, and scheduling. Rootstock MRP for NetSuite also supports lot and serial part tracking. The tool can support make-to-stock, make-to-order, engineer-to-order, and hybrid manufacturing environments.
Rootstock, a unit of The Danville Group, was launched in the spring and is something of a work in progress. General availability of the service started late in September, and Xtellus is the company’s first announced customer. And, while Rootstock covers most core MRP functionality, some key pieces have yet to be added. The company, for example, recently added scheduling and capacity planning. And features such as PLM integration, master production scheduling, and estimate management are still in the works.
But Rootstock has a good shot at making good on its ambitious roadmap. That’s because the executives running the company have plenty of experience. Several of them were formerly with Relevant Business Systems, including Pat Garrehy, Relevant’s founder and CEO for 20 years and now founder, president, and CEO of Rootstock and of its parent company, The Danville Group.