Anyone familiar with DBA Manufacturing software? 2

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Has anyone here used or have knowledge of this software?

http://www.dbamanufacturing.com/

especially if in combination with SolidWorks being the main source of data from its BOMs (Excel)

Can anyone recommend a better product in the same price range?

 

[keepinitcool]

I used if for a few years. You'd have to use a export from SW and import into DBA, as far as I remember. You can download a free version of the program to try out.

You would need to format like Parent P/N, P/N, Qty. It can also contain reference designators, etc.. But I don't recall the details using those. You can dump multiple items into a file to import, so you don't have to do one at a time.

For its price, I don't know if there is anything else that does the same stuff for BOM, job routing, purchasing, etc... It's pretty powerful actually.

 

[toffeet]

We are in the process of implementing DBA. I did quite a bit of homework before we decided on DBA and I must say that you will have to go a long way to find anything else for the same price and capabilities.

It's a good program for a small size manufacturer.

Solid Edge V19 SP1 on WinXP SP2

 

[toffeet]

One of the reasons it is so affordable is that they use Firebird SQL, which is an open source database server. It comes with DBA and you don’t have to spend extra money on a SQL like for example Windows SQL Server which most of the other options require.

Solid Edge V19 SP1 on WinXP SP2

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

keepinitcool ... Were you involved in the implementation of DBA, or just as a user? I have had the free version for a while now, but have not been given 'serious play time' at work. It now looks like that might happen though.

toffeet ... That's the conclusion I had come to.
What stage of implementation are you at?
What 'special' requirements are there from a SW point of view?
How helpful/good is the support?

 

[toffeet]

Hello CorBlimeyLimey,

We are a relative small manufacturer of agricultural equipment, meaning low volumes huge BOM’s. My main responsibility is design and development but because of my financial management background I am also very involved with the implementation of DBA.

Implementation stage: I am almost done with the configuration setup (users, tax system,) the next step will be to import our list of customers, suppliers, stock and BOM’s. The importing process is quite easy from Excel. It’s a matter of getting all the information into Excel.

Special requirements: You might have noticed that I use Solid Edge, no huge difference from Solidworks. As long as you can create BOM’s in Excel format everything should be OK. Just be very sure that the columns of your BOM is consistent.

Support: Well, we are in South Africa. Their responses to my emails were very good and so are all the PDF manuals. The installation and the server setup were quite easy.

Another thing I like about DBA is that you can keep the manufacturing GL accounts separate from the financial GL accounts. That makes the implementation a lot simpler and more flexible.


Solid Edge V19 SP1 on WinXP SP2

 

[keepinitcool]

I was one of two people helping to set up the system from scratch. We went through a number of questions with DBA, but they have made a lot of improvements to the program in the ~2+ years since we implemented it. Though I work somewhere else now. We were doing BOMs of 1 to a few levels and up to 600 parts per product. The inventory list had over 3000 items.

The nice features I thought were neat are the ability to attach a picture to an item and quickly generate catalogs of items that also include the picture. Additionally each item can have what appeared to be unlimited number of files linked to it. So we linked various Acrobat files to item numbers. The MRP system seemed reasonable too. You could generate a requirement based on job orders and have it automatically create POs or quote requests to primary vendors (it could group all items by primary vendor) which is useful for thing like hardware and small electrical components.

They seem pretty good at taking suggestions even though they may not always be able to implement them quickly. The other nice thing about the program is it has a built-in report writer similar to Crystal Reports, although not quite as advanced. I was able to create many custom reports this way.