TLDR
- 73% of manufacturers say their ERP cannot prevent supply chain execution failures, per LeanDNA's 2026 Wakefield Research study.
- ERP software is the system of record for inventory, orders, and financials. Manufacturing supply chain management needs a system of decision built on top of it.
- A factory-first AI decision layer like APEX turns ERP data into prioritized actions for buyers and planners. Documented results:
- 80 hours per week saved at Siemens
- 700,000+ manual ERP updates eliminated annually at Johnson Controls
- 10x ROI in six months at a global medical technology manufacturer
The high cost of waiting for the ERP to decide
ERP software has been the backbone of manufacturing supply chain management for three decades. A 2026 study of 150 senior decision-makers at manufacturing companies, conducted by Wakefield Research, found that 73% of those manufacturers say their ERP cannot prevent execution failures. Another 93% report difficulty getting visibility into execution outcomes from their ERP.
This is the gap manufacturers try to close with ERP upgrades, BI tools, and platform consolidation. The data says they haven’t closed the gap yet.
The same study found that 75% of supply plan failures show up at the factory execution stage. The ERP captures the failure after the fact. It does not prevent it.
The problem: where ERP software falls short in supply chain management
Most manufacturers know their ERP is essential. It is the system of record for inventory, orders, schedules, and financials. The problem is not what the ERP is. The problem is what manufacturers have to do after the ERP tells them where they stand.
Three patterns show up in nearly every supply chain organization running on ERP alone:
- The data does not become a decision. The ERP shows that part X is late and part Y is short. It does not tell the buyer which one to expedite first when both feed the same line, or what the cost of waiting another 24 hours actually is.
- Cross-functional translation falls to people. When the C-suite asks supply chain why a customer order shipped late, the answer takes a buyer two days to assemble from screens, exports, and pivot tables. The ERP holds the data. It does not write the explanation.
- Reaction is the default mode. Per the same 2026 study, 51% of manufacturers take a week or longer to decide on corrective action after they spot a problem. By then, the action is no longer corrective. It is recovery.
An ERP is a system of record. Manufacturing needs a system of decision.
Most manufacturing leaders are starting to make this distinction out loud. The ERP is the source of truth for what happened. The factory floor needs a source of truth for what to do next. Those are not the same system, and the gap between them is where every shortage, every expedite, and every executive escalation lives.
Suzanne Maddux, Vice President of Supply Chain at Mercury Systems, puts it directly:
"An ERP system is just data. It doesn't make decisions."
That sentence is the entire argument. For 30 years, manufacturers have invested in systems that capture more data, faster, with more accuracy. Almost none of that investment went into what to do with the data on a Tuesday morning when a critical part is short and the customer is calling.
APEX, LeanDNA's factory-first AI platform, is the layer that closes that gap. It reads the ERP, applies AI built specifically for manufacturing materials management, and tells your team what action to take, with the cost of waiting shown alongside each item. That is what Maddux is pointing at when she separates "data" from "decisions."
Automating the work the ERP creates
There is a related cost to running on ERP alone that does not show up in any executive scorecard: the hours your team spends translating the ERP into something usable. Most buyers spend the first hour of every morning running the same reports, building the same spreadsheets, and reconciling the same data. The ERP did not hand it to them in the shape they needed it.
Rodolfo MacKinney, Order Management, Materials, and Scheduling Manager at Siemens, describes what changes when that translation gets automated:
"The process of managing the inventory, it took a lot of time, the process of preparation. We had a lot of manual reports, Excel spreadsheets and so on. And it was never as accurate [as LeanDNA].”
This is what a decision layer does in practice. It does not just deliver the answer. It deletes the work that was creating the answer in the wrong place. At Siemens, that work was 80 hours a week of buyer reporting, gone. At Johnson Controls, it was 700,000 manual ERP updates eliminated in a single year, plus 13 hours per week saved at every site. Full story here. None of those hours were creating product. They were reconciling spreadsheets the ERP forced into existence.
When AI takes that work, two things happen at once. Buyers get their time back for the judgment calls only they can make. And the data quality everyone has been chasing improves, because the manual handoffs that introduce the errors are gone.
Why a decision layer is a competitive advantage
Across LeanDNA's customer base, the manufacturers who have closed the ERP-to-execution gap are not the ones with the newest ERP. They are the ones who stopped waiting for the ERP to be the answer and built a decision layer on top of it.
In a 2025 study of 200 U.S. manufacturing leaders, only 19% of manufacturers reported being fully digitized. The other 81% are running their supply chains on a combination of ERP, spreadsheets, and meetings. AI changes the math. The same study found that 92% of executives and 100% of supply chain leaders agree AI is essential to future supply chain operations. The question is no longer whether to add a decision layer. It is how fast.
Dustin Dunn, Inventory and Technology Leader at Spirit AeroSystems, frames the role APEX plays alongside an existing ERP investment:
"LeanDNA takes that large pile of [ERP] information and data and sanitizes it, and organizes it in a way that we can then digest it. We work out of SAP. We rely on LeanDNA for a lot of the data and analytics, and information that we can make decisions on."
This is the right way to think about the investment. The ERP keeps the books. APEX runs the play. Most manufacturers do not need to replace their ERP. They need a layer above it that turns the data the ERP captures into the decisions the factory has to make every shift, every day.
The competitive advantage is not abstract. It compounds quarter over quarter. Manufacturers running a decision layer above their ERP resolve shortages faster, hold less safety stock, and spend less time explaining last week's misses to the executive team. Those are not soft benefits. They show up in working capital, in OTD, and in the conversations finance has stopped having about supply chain surprises.
Strategies for building a decision layer on top of your ERP
1. Audit where decisions actually get made today
Map the path from data to action across one critical part family. Most manufacturers can name the system that captured the data and the person who took the action. They cannot name what happened in between. That gap is where time evaporates and where the decision layer earns its keep.
2. Stop scoping ERP upgrades as the answer to execution problems
ERP upgrades fix data fidelity, not decision speed. Per the 2026 LeanDNA Wakefield study, 73% of manufacturers say their ERP cannot prevent execution failures. If the data is already there, the next investment dollar should go to the layer that acts on it.
3. Consolidate buyer and planner workflows into a single decision tool
When a buyer has to open four screens to clear one shortage, the bottleneck is not the data. It is the workflow. Platforms like APEX bring exception lists, recommended actions, and supplier follow-ups into one view, with the cost of inaction shown alongside each item.
4. Deploy AI on the work humans should not be doing
Reconciling reports, chasing supplier ETAs, and reformatting executive dashboards are not jobs that benefit from human judgment. Per LeanDNA's research, leadership confidence in AI for supply chain has reached 92%. The fastest payback comes from putting AI on the lowest-judgment work first, then expanding into the recommendations and prioritization tasks.
5. Measure decision speed, not just data quality
Most supply chain KPIs measure outcomes (OTD, inventory turns, fill rate). Add a leading indicator: how long does it take from a problem appearing in the ERP to a person taking corrective action? If the answer is measured in days, the decision layer is being done in spreadsheets, and the spreadsheets are the bottleneck. Track that number every month.
Proof: companies that built a decision layer on top of their ERP
Building a decision layer on top of an ERP is not a theoretical exercise. Manufacturers across aerospace, industrial, and medical devices are doing it now, and the results show up in the metrics finance pays attention to:
- 80 hours per week saved at Siemens, where buyer reporting that used to live in spreadsheets is now automated. (Read more)
- 700,000+ manual ERP updates eliminated annually at Johnson Controls. (Read more)
- 13 hours per week saved per site at Johnson Controls, freeing buyers to work on resolution instead of reporting.
- 10x ROI in 6 months at a global medical technology manufacturer that adopted APEX as the decision layer above its existing ERP stack. (Read more)
FAQs
What is ERP software in supply chain management?
ERP software is the system of record that manufacturers use to manage inventory, orders, production schedules, and financials. In supply chain management, an ERP captures what is happening across the network, but it does not prescribe what to do about problems. That decision-making layer typically sits above the ERP. Per LeanDNA's 2026 Wakefield study, 73% of manufacturers say their ERP alone cannot prevent execution failures, which is why decision platforms like APEX are increasingly paired with ERP software.
How does ERP software help with supply chain execution?
ERP software gives supply chain teams a single source of truth for inventory, demand, and supplier data. It captures the transactional record of every order, receipt, and schedule change. Where ERP software typically falls short is at the execution layer, meaning the daily decisions about which shortages to expedite, which suppliers to push, and how to reprioritize when something breaks. Closing that gap requires a decision layer that reads ERP data and turns it into prioritized actions, with the cost of waiting shown alongside each item.
Is ERP software enough for modern supply chain management?
For most manufacturers, no. ERP software handles the data and transaction layer well. It does not handle decision speed. Per LeanDNA's 2026 research, 51% of manufacturers take a week or longer to decide on corrective action after they spot a problem, even with full ERP visibility. Modern supply chain management increasingly pairs ERP software with a factory-first AI decision platform that automates prioritization, accelerates response, and integrates supplier collaboration. The combination is what closes the planning-to-execution gap.
Conclusion: the next decade is decided above the ERP
The next decade of manufacturing performance will not be decided by which ERP you run. It will be decided by what you build on top of it. The manufacturers who treat the ERP as the system of record and add a system of decision above it will spend less time reconciling reports and more time getting product out the door. The ones who keep waiting for the ERP itself to close the gap will keep funding the gap.
The cost of waiting is no longer hypothetical. It is in your firefighting budget, your buyer turnover, and your missed customer commitments.
Want to see how APEX turns your ERP data into faster decisions? Book a demo.
