Machinery, high tech, food and chemicals run on different rhythms. Production stays profitable when planning, assets and service share one operational truth in IFS, and your people keep the decisions.
Machinery builders, high-tech manufacturers and food and chemical producers face the same squeeze: supply volatility, shorter lead times, labour shortage, downtime and circularity. These pressures meet where planning, production, assets and service need one operational truth in IFS. The plan that looked solid in January is often wrong by March, and purchasing pays for the difference. With Demand Planner and demand-driven MRP in IFS Cloud, the machine calculates the scenario and your people choose the move. See demand forecasting.
For service directors, margin per contract should be a daily number, not a quarterly surprise. In IFS Service Management, contracts, entitlements, service levels and billing come together, so you invoice what you deliver. After delivery, the installed base, spare parts and contract terms decide your margin. Plant and maintenance managers know a line is only as available as its weakest asset. Availability holds when lifecycle management, operational intelligence, maintenance planning and predictive maintenance connect; see asset availability.
IT leads face a different cost: manufacturers still on old versions are not saving money, they are accumulating deferred cost. IFS Cloud can run service, assets, projects, manufacturing or planning next to SAP, through clear APIs and process ownership. For COOs, agentic AI starts with authority, not technology: IFS Cloud, IFS.ai and your operating rules decide what the system may prepare and where a person must approve. Eqeep is IFS Specialized Partner for manufacturers in the Benelux. Read about composable ERP.
Start with the pressure your team already feels. The business case usually comes down to higher throughput, stronger asset availability, lower supply-chain cost and better service margin.
You need margin visibility per contract
You need production lines that stay available
You need a forecast purchasing can act on
You need to modernise without replacing SAP
You need AI that stays within your rules
You need carbon in every planning decision
You need traceability in precision manufacturing
EWT designs and produces wind turbines of 250kW, 500kW to 1MW, with in-house product design and certification. It was running IFS Applications 8.2, implemented by a third party with little user involvement, and many users switched to Excel. Management and key users were interviewed, Eqeep verified and tested the upgrade to version 9, and the quality of the data behind lead times, minimum order quantities and lot sizes was improved.
Planning, production, assets and service need one operational truth in IFS. That is where margin holds after the machine ships.
Planning
A forward-looking signal for purchasing and production, with capacity simulation.
People decide: the machine calculates the scenario; your planners choose the move.
Production and assets
Predictive signals become scheduled maintenance in a planned window, instead of an unplanned stop.
People decide: the trade-off between uptime and cost.
Aftermarket
Installed base, spare parts and contract terms decide the margin. Contracts, entitlements and billing come together, so you invoice what you deliver.
People decide: the customer promise versus capacity.
IFS.ai keeps prediction, decision and execution inside IFS Cloud. People stay responsible for the decision.
Neither vendor route is an upgrade; both are re-implementations. That makes this the moment to compare.
Service updates arrive every third Thursday of the month, and release updates twice a year.
See how your processes actually run, straight from the data in your existing IT systems.
At the installed base, which becomes the control point once equipment is in the field. Margin then depends on details: the right spare part, the right technician, the right contract entitlement and the right response window. When service contracts, parts and field work run on the same record as production, the aftermarket becomes a margin pool instead of a cost centre.
For machinery and industrial equipment the usual route combines IFS Cloud, manufacturing ERP, IFS EAM, FSM and planning capabilities. Asset availability is the first place where EAM and planning meet. Configure-to-order and engineer-to-order flows, the installed base, spare parts, warranty and service contracts become part of the same decision flow.
No. Keep finance in the incumbent ERP and move asset management, service or manufacturing execution to IFS Cloud. Composable ERP shows where IFS can sit next to SAP or another core system.
It fits where planning, production, asset health and service decisions meet. IFS.ai can forecast demand, flag exceptions and prepare actions, while planners and operations leaders choose the trade-off between capacity, margin and customer promise.
Yes. Discrete and process manufacturers win when planning, assets and service share one backbone in IFS. For food and beverage, chemicals, life sciences and paint and coatings, IFS adds formulation and recipe management, batch balancing and full traceability with batch tracking. See IFS for process manufacturing.
Trade-offs stay human: customer promise versus capacity, uptime versus cost, margin versus speed. The system can prepare options; people decide what the business accepts.
The colleague who knows IFS in manufacturing, from supply chain to service.
Solution Architect
Utrecht, Netherlands
