If you follow baseball, you know Shohei Ohtani. He is a rare in that he made the jump from the Japanese NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) league to the MLB – only 1% of MLB players can do that – and also for being a true two-way player as both a designated hitter and a pitcher for the LA Dodgers. Most players spend a lifetime perfecting the skill of a pitcher or a hitter. To have both is extraordinary and Ohtani is the only two-way player currently playing in the MLB.
I’m reminded of the concept that has its roots much earlier but was perhaps first made mainstream in business by Michael Porter that you “cannot be all things to all people”. While he was talking about a company and I’ve seen that first-hand, it applies to sports as well. Athletes are well-tuned machines that specialize in one thing – sprinter versus distance, offence and defense, in-field or out. The amount of work it takes to do that one thing well drives the necessity of not being more. Yet Ohtani did so and we’ll talk about how below.
production operations issues
First, let’s get to your shop floor. If you have a full ERP or MRP, you have a system that promises to do everything for you. It can well touch every area in your shop, but it will not master all of those. We put ERPs into two buckets: those that are pre-built and those that are more DIY (think low-code, no-code or even modular). Pre-built ERPs come with a broad range of skills from payroll and financials to inventory supply. They often have a manufacturing “arm”. The true specialization of an ERP is in its reach, not its depth. You may be tempted to try a new system if you’re not getting what you need and I’m here to tell you that you may need to look to your shop for the answer.
It is rare that an ERP will fail you financially. They are built to report on all matters of finance from the standard balance sheet and income statement to payroll and even cash flow analysis. We often hear from manufacturers that the area of the tool built for them – the production side – is weak, expensive or ill-fitting and so they consider replacement.
Your shop may not need a new reporting system; it may need help in the actual work it does and this is not an area that an ERP is equipped to help you with. Let’s look at shipping to work this out – it’s a simple reminder of a very complex problem.
Your shipping area is likely on the perimeter of your shop floor near the dock door or by the side wall. This makes sense due to the nature of the work that area does and the room it needs for all the boxes, pallets, containers and other shipping materials it goes through. It is not central and has little information about what’s going on in the shop. An order shows up at shipping and is packed, prepared and labeled to send out. The first time that your shipping coordinator even knows that an order is on-time or late may be when that paperwork shows up, accompanying the goods and it’s far too late for them to do anything about it.
Maybe your ERP gives a status of jobs, and your shipping coordinator can see that it is incoming. That will solve a bit of the problem for them as they can be ready to receive it, but there are limited things they can do other than push rush shipping to make up for lost time should it be behind. On your financials, you see the cost of shipping rise and perhaps you dive in to see why. You notice that orders are being rush-shipped and you need to solve this problem. Do you add time to your jobs to account for this so you have extra leverage? Do you go further? Do you have enough information to see where the real problem is and solve it for good?
production control – where it all went wrong
The problem with shipping is that it happens after everything else is said and done. It’s whether Ohtani delivers or not during a particular game, but his work (and yours) should and must start elsewhere. Preparation of every aspect of his performance is critical for Ohtani’s and thus the Dodgers success, just like the performance of your shipping team dictates your customers’ experience with you (product late or on time, accurate or not, perfect or broken). But it should not be the measure of the work done; that has to come earlier.
Ohtani relies on a tool created originally by a Japanese track and field coach, Takashi Harada. It is a system of habits that you use to reach a goal. For you, that goal is shipping product on time, accurately, at the estimated cost, with profit; for Ohtani, it’s that elusive perfect game and a hit at every bat. Ohtani included pitching control, sharpness and speed in his square as well as mental strength, personal character and karma. Rounding out the 8 pillars were physical conditioning and big-league targets. Your shop floor is a little different and to get to the perfect shipping time / cost continuum, you will need to consider job promises, the capacity to meet them, the materials, people, machines, schedule and skills to complete the work and even control over the processes that you’re using. Your ERP usually falls short in at least half of these areas.
It may cue the job (routing, Bill of Materials) but it won’t run it through it’s paces – ahead or behind, now or later, in front or behind other work. It may know the cost of the job (estimated) and it may be able to track actual costs, but only if it goes well beyond operators “clocking on and off” jobs. What happens when something goes wrong? If your ERP is not flexible enough for the real world that is your manufacturing, you might consider a system that offers tighter production control. This is the world of the athlete; when performance is not as expected, you must look to the building blocks and start again.
What would it take for your team to hit a home run every time? To pitch the perfect game and deliver on-time, as-expected to your customers? Is that something that is possible for you? If you’re curious, reach out and ask us how.
You might also like: The 7 Best Manufacturing ERP Alternatives for Small and Growing Manufacturers in 2026