SAP VS QAD's MFG/PRO

wsong

Member
I can help on this part

Generally speaking, they are not at the same level at all as far as functionality are concerned. I have been working on SAP for 4 years, PP and PS module. Here is the difference from a PP consutant point of view

1. Security
no match at all, SAP use security objects ( can be T-code, plants, company, order-types, all organization levels, fields, views, activites, movement types, tabs all you name it) QAD (Entity, sites, menu, account code, fields) Because of these difference. QAD is not so good in compliance with SOX. some additional enhancements has to be made in areas like "Respensiblity segregation".

2. Sales and distributions

SAP provides additional functions like schedule lines (QAD one date for one order line, can 't give a ATP check partial to the order line) / Detailed controls by multi-sales organization levels. Billing according shipments ( QAD, you can only bill the customer according to all the uninvoiced shipment), Complete document history tracking, Number ranges by order type, Omni-flexible sales BOM ( QAD is rubbish on this part), item category ( billing relevant, shipment relevent etc). Very flexible price in SAP ( support all types of pricing ) QAD less flexible

QAD is better than SAP only in pricing, QAD hold 5 decimals , SAP only hold 2.


3. Planning
Strategies in SAP is very flexible - make to order ( all the things can be linked to the order), make to stock ( several types), plan at the assembly level, .....etc too many. You can also configure your own strategy. QAD only have 2 strategy in SAP 40 = sales order consumes forecast and planning with planning material.
MRP planning, very flexible lot sizing procedure, dynamic safty stock.

Multi-plant planning is very strong in SAP. if each plant belongs to different company code, corresponding sales order and purchase order can be generated on the fly. which is very streamlined process for inter-company processing. QAD have to use EMT and EDI, not realtime. difficult to change because changes are converyed through EDI

Production versions which combines BOMS and routing perfect for multiple production lines environment.

Production BOM and costing BOM is very useful.

fully configurable ATP check in SAP

Production order, fully configurable operation behaviour, fully automated subcontract processing. QAD is a pain in subcontract processing.

In contrast to QAD, SAP has upto 6 cost collectors ( In SAP they are called standard values, labor machine setup and others ) you have maximum flexiblity with those. E.g. you can put the water usage in the routing to absorb utilty cost from the supporting cost centers.

Mass processing in SAP is convienient for handling hundreds of orders per day.

SAP PP-PI for chemical industry is another very strong area which I am not familiar with.

Project orientented production is very good for ship buiding, equipment building, molds building. very very good. No similar function in QAD

Sales order orientented production is very goods for build / procure for order business. You know this purchase order is for what sales order, they are hard-linked. QAD is just a memo field in purchase order and inventory are not linked to sales order.


QAD is very good in Kanban management. Better visiblity and usabiltty than SAP

QAD is better in supplier release management over SAP.

4. MM module

Configurable movement type with account codes behind. QAD you have to enter account code with 3.7 / 3.9 unplanned receipt. SAP does not give you a chance to mess up the accounting by the logistics.

Multi-line entry

Fully integrated Warehouse management.

SAP's customer consignment and supplier consignment is clumsy. QAD has a better and simple design, but QAD's supplier consigment is famous for its bugs in supplier consigment module. Maybe now these bugs are removed.


5. CO module

No US software ( oracle, JDE, QAD) have a similar powerful CO management tool as SAP does.

In contrast to the fact that costing accounting of US software are blended dirty with financial accounting . SAP has a genius idea to run the costing seperately using something called CO document. so you can have very very flexible rule and many automatic tools in cost allocation and assessment. The good thing is you can reallocate and change the flow of cost without interferring your financials. They are seperate. SAP costing and US software cost module are completely different design. Show much more details in labor / under over absorption, product costing, effiency of all the department in the company. ABC costing can be realised very easily with CO module.


To be continued
 

wsong

Member
Financials
SAP is not that prominant in Financial module actually. Most of the function SAP has can be seen on QAD. But userfriendiess is always a big issue with QAD. QAD's fix asset module is less flexible than that of SAP's.


Archetecture

SAP R/3 is 3-tiered structure, exellent design enables users to access SAP server with a low speed WAN with fully graphic interface. With QAD you can only use character interface over the low speed WAN. Bad experience for user. eB2 Desktop's performance is unsatifactory. Uanable to handle high volume transactions. The centralised management for QAD needs a lot of improvement.


Conclusions

SAP is huge software package, SAP's existing functionality covers most of business requirement of customer. but to a customer, most of these functionalities are wasted. In SAP customizations means " setting those hundreds of thousands of interlinked switches to archieve what customer wants" In QAD customizations means " change QAD's source codes" . You can't say who is better, because it requires a lot experience ( many comes from failure ) to configure the SAP system as customer expects.

QAD is a compact and small one with functions just enough for a manufacturing company. You are only provided with functions supporting only most commonly used business practices. When it comes to special business requirements, go find a good progress programmer.

SAP implementation is normally 10 times more expensive that of Mfg/Pro but with better user acceptance and better business control. QAD costs much less to implement and maintain, but you have to change the QAD program to archieve a good customer satifactions.

Both SAP and QAD reporting function is not satisfying, sometimes I found QAD's report is more relevant than that of SAP's. But SAP's reports especially ALV report is easy to convert to EXCEL and allows to hide or show a range of fields which makes user very happy.

If you have 20millions dollars to spend and want to manage a complex business organizations, go SAP, If you only want to manage a manufacturing plant with 1 million dollars go QAD. If your plant is streamlined with very clear and simple business process, or use a lot Kanbans, under most of cases QAD is a better choice than SAP.
 

rhi

Member
If you have 20millions dollars to spend and want to manage a complex business organizations, go SAP, If you only want to manage a manufacturing plant with 1 million dollars go QAD.

While this statement has been the standard response for a lot of years, it is no longer true.

Both SAP and Oracle now sell solutions targeted to small and medium businesses. (see http://www.sap.com/solutions/sme/index.epx) Oracle also now sells a much cheaper version of their database called standard edition, in case any tells you that of underlying databases that mfgpro supports (progress and oracle) progress is cheaper.

Oracle Applications is also targeting small and medium businesses, so my guess is QAD as a company is either going to wither up and dry, or be bought.

WSONG does a good job comparing the similar functions between SAP and QAD, but I'll give you a high level comarison that hopefully will paint a clearer picture.

QAD likes to place itself into the 'ERP' category of vendors out there (even renaming MFGPro to QAD Enterprise) , but it falls far short of the delivering the functionality of a true ERP system.

Here is what wikipedia has for ERP software definition.

1) Manufacturing

Engineering, Bills of Material, Scheduling, Capacity, Workflow Management, Quality Control, Cost Management, Manufacturing Process, Manufacturing Projects, Manufacturing Flow

2) Supply Chain Management

Inventory, Order Entry, Purchasing, Product Configurator, Supply Chain Planning, Supplier Scheduling, Inspection of goods, Claim Processing, Commission Calculation

3) Financials

General Ledger, Cash Management, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets

4) Projects

Costing, Billing, Time and Expense, Activity Management

5) Human Resources

Human Resources, Payroll, Training, Time & Attendance, Benefits

6) Customer Relationship Management

Sales and Marketing, Commissions, Service, Customer Contact and Call Center support

7) Data Warehouse

and various Self-Service interfaces for Customers, Suppliers, and Employees


MFGPro (or QAD Enterprise) does well at #1, so-so at #2, seriously lacking at # 3, so-so at #4, and completely misses at #5,6 & 7.
Well, #7, they do have a product they sell outside of MFPPro called QADBI, which I believe is still at version 1 or 2, and does not work well at all, and since it is available for only a Progess database, it does not support star-schemas which is a necessary funtion of a data warehouse. (Not sure what they were thinking - I think they are still learning in this area)

SAP and the likes (Oracle/Peoplesoft) are true enterprise products. MFGPro - think 'shop floor' software. Even the larger tier-1 companys that use mfgpro, use it more in a manner as plant software, and they have it reporting data back to SAP or Oracle E-Business suite.
 

wsong

Member
Thanks for Rhi's input

Some comment on the fate of " Withering up Mfg/Pro". I have a chance to know the SAP SME and oracle SME. Let me talk about their SME offering.

For several years, SAP's SME is made of "Business One" and "All in one". Business one is a small business software bought from Iseral which is basically order handling module + inventory track module + a very simple financial module. No planning No costing No manufacturing.

"All in one" is a preconfigured R/3 under the disguise of term "All in one". Very very few company successfully preconfigure it using the standard tools provided by SAP. Preconfigure the R/3 with "LSMW" "BCSET" "CATT" are so sentitive to patch levels. It is only a selling concept. Customer bought "All in one" normally implements it just like standard R/3. Now the preconfigured SAP project seems to be standstill in SAP.

SAP is developing a hosted version "A1S" in China. It maybe a real threat. but it may also sink as its tens of other projects.

R/3 at the moment is all SAP can effectively give to customers no matter what they call it.

Then let us look at what Oracle provides to SME market. Now oracle is down selling formerly "JDE" to customer as SME solution. I think most guys agree JDE is a more flexible and much larger ERP solution than QAD. Implement it requires every experienced consulting team. But JDE implementation resources is becoming scarce especially in areas outside US. A small company buying JDE will find it is too big for them to handle and maintain.

Microsoft. A unbelievable joke. Do you still remember "Project Green"?

In my opion, QAD will comfortably survive for another ten years till a real SME killer appears.

I have implemented projects in companies like Alcatel, Total, Johnson&Johnson, Philips, Moog, JCI, Visteon, Ingelsollrand, Cummins etc. I found companies with a complex org structure and business lines may well fit SAP. but companies like JCI which has a very clear and streamlined structure has higher efficiency. These companies don't need complex software to run, because they are simple. less people are serving the system. but more productivity on the shopfloor. In a typical SAP environment, nearly all the people are on the system, but more often I saw a waste of time and money by doing that. IT directors don't care about that, by implementing SAP, IT directors will have more money to play around and more importance in the company.

I hope I am not misleading the people that Mfg/Pro is a very good product. On the hand it has lot to improve. and what is ridiculous that they are not eager to learn from their compititors. It seems they are comfortable with the functionalities which not changed much since 15 years ago. For example Mfg/Pro is very very weak in make to order industry ( like the equipment instrumenting industry) in project manufacturing company ( like system contractor). These two industries have more money and represents the high-end of the manufacturing industry.

QAD can be better, the sad fact is that they are not.

I have worked on QAD for more than 7 years, that is why finally I switched to SAP. still I keep an eye on the old Mfg/Pro.
 

rhi

Member
WSONG, I agree with your assesment. SAP and Oracle have just entered the SME market, and their products may not yet quite match up with MFGPro in the tier-2 market, but what they have realized in the past few years is that there are many, many more SME businesses running ERP type apps than there are large multi billion dollar oragizations running ERP apps, so there is a substantial amount of money to be made in that area.

But here is where SAP and Oracle have the advantage. QAD's total revenue is less than $250 million per year, so how much do they put into R&D? My guess is not much. By contrast, Oracle invests over $2 billion per year in R & D. SAP is probably close to that as well.

So I think yes, 10 years or less, they will be delivering a much higher quality well rounded product than MFGpro, and thus I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for companies like QAD.
 

wsong

Member
WSONG, I agree with your assesment. SAP and Oracle have just entered the SME market, and their products may not yet quite match up with MFGPro in the tier-2 market, but what they have realized in the past few years is that there are many, many more SME businesses running ERP type apps than there are large multi billion dollar oragizations running ERP apps, so there is a substantial amount of money to be made in that area.

But here is where SAP and Oracle have the advantage. QAD's total revenue is less than $250 million per year, so how much do they put into R&D? My guess is not much. By contrast, Oracle invests over $2 billion per year in R & D. SAP is probably close to that as well.

So I think yes, 10 years or less, they will be delivering a much higher quality well rounded product than MFGpro, and thus I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for companies like QAD.

That is a bad news for guys who makes a living on the the software. I think the goods news is that M$ is doing badly on the ERP market, shareholders of M$ won't tolerate the huge losses of their ERP business for ever. that may give QAD some chances.
 
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