Hardware is a manufacturing industry with discrete processes and processes, and the production process is mainly metal processing and assembly of components. Hardware manufacturing mainly includes: blank casting, stamping manufacturing, and machining. The processing links include casting, forging, hot table processing, raw material segmentation, wire bending, turning, milling, planing, grinding or sheet metal forming. There are many kinds of hardware products and different specifications. At present, there are more than ten kinds of hardware products in the material market. Including: locks, handles, door and window hardware, home decoration hardware, plumbing hardware, architectural decoration hardware, tools, bathroom hardware, kitchen hardware, etc. “Because of the wide variety of materials, the combination of different sizes, different colors and different specifications has caused certain difficulties for material management.

       As an industry with strong discrete characteristics, hardware manufacturers often encounter bottlenecks under traditional manual management in their daily operations. The first is fierce market competition, and user needs are constantly changing. Many hardware companies are mainly engaged in small-volume and medium-volume production. The design and manufacturing processes of products are constantly changing according to customer needs. Therefore, hardware companies need to develop good production plans to enhance Flexibility in production to adapt to changing markets. The author believes that the products of general hardware companies are produced according to the order (contract). The product structure is complex, the parts are many, and the external and self-made are combined. The traditional manual management is used to rationally optimize the scheduling and production manager's work. The amount is extremely heavy, and the information data of various departments cannot be well unified standard and interface sharing, and it is bound to be unable to scientifically control the delivery date and affect the order fulfillment rate.

       Secondly, there are many external parts of hardware manufacturing enterprises and many foreign manufacturers involved. In the traditional manual management mode, how to control the product quality, price and reputation of the manufacturers, how to control the early purchase Quantity, to ensure that neither the production nor the inventory backlog, to ensure a "reasonable" of the most reasonable capital, is the most difficult problem for all hardware companies.

       Furthermore, hardware products have long manufacturing cycles, many processes, and many abnormal situations (rework, scrapping, splitting, feeding, replacement, buffering materials, etc.), large investment, and need to track their production processes and conduct cost analysis. . In addition, in the production process, customers are likely to insert orders at any time according to market changes, which is unpredictable by the five gold manufacturing companies. Relying on manual management, we can't cope with the changing requirements of customer orders. Only after the order is confirmed can we start to be included in the management. Sometimes the order status has changed, but it has not responded immediately, so it is often too busy. It can be seen that the initiation of informatization construction has become a top priority for decision makers in various hardware companies.