Material Requirements Planning Module Improvements
DEAR Systems
The Material Requirements Planning module is aimed at addressing the needs of the production process. New production features will provide our current customers with powerful, logical manufacturing solutions to add to their inventory solution.
For more information, see Getting Started.
We would like to know your thoughts on how to further improve this module.
- DEAR Team
Eddie@foodtmservices.com
Tel: 07710 349111
www.foodtmservices.com
Hello Andrew,
The point is that in your General Settings -> Production Process Customization -> On Order release produce you have Quantity Required option selected.
This option means that Production Orders will always be created regardless stock availability, i.e. you will always produce the quantity which is required in Production Order. This option is introduced to support the scenarios when nested Production BOM components should be never taken from stock.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Elena
Hi Elena
Further to my post yesterday there is another issue with the current configuration settings in that, based on what you have said the logic is designed (I'll ignore the fact that it is not working as expected) to take into account stock of nested components in an associated warehouse only when you have the "Process customisation > When order is authorised" setting turned on.
Ourselves, along with a lot of other ambient / frozen food manufacturers, do not make to Sales Orders, as a lot of our orders are placed up to 8 weeks in advance of when they are required, we then often don't produce the product until a couple of weeks before they are required. As an example yesterday when I was testing I authorised an order on behalf of a colleague and then got a call from the production manager because 18 production orders had been created each one for between 125g - 450g of product. Which is a complete nonsense and un-manageable in real life. I am aware that you can consolidate orders, but can you do it on a when required week by week basis to get a forward plan?
What I think is required is the following:
Turn off or on system produced production orders based on sales order - irrespective of other setting i.e. non conditional
Turn off or on system produced production orders for nested components - global
Turn off or on nested component stock considered for production orders - by SKU
Use the shop floor defined in the production BoM of the nested component for resource - NOT the receiving production order shop floor
Define which locations are to be used for taking into account nested component stock
Logistic path - remove constraints so it can reflect reality (Multiple combinations of shop floors & storage locations)
KR
Eddie
Hello Kimberlie Forsberg,
Regarding your request:
"Implement an alert if there's a discrepancy in the Required/Expected Quantity vs. Actual Quantity. Three problematic scenarios include (a) the incorrect product is picked, (b) not enough of a component was picked or (c) too many of a component were picked in a Production Run using the scan method of input."
We will add alert popups when pick is done via scanning to the production operation.
Please let me know if it will be useful to have some notifications to e-mail about the pick process issues?
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
Elena
Requesting adding Instruction URL link to UI in Production Runs. Ideally we could input a clickable link for each step in the Production Run as well as an overall procedure link for the whole Production Run.
Hello Kimberlie Forsberg,
Thank you for your feedback.
As for "Requesting adding Instruction URL link to UI in Production Runs. Ideally we could input a clickable link for each step in the Production Run as well as an overall procedure link for the whole Production Run. ":
At the moment, we are developing the ability to add noted and attachments to each operation in the run. The link can be added as a note.
Best regards,
Elena
Hi,
It would be great to have the option to update the default BOM used on a Production Order for any remaining runs on that order. For example, We have Production orders generated via Nested BOMs and as these Production Orders are usually for large quantities, we require multiple runs over an extended period of time to complete the order. The system manages this very well.
The issue is that we get minor BOM changes to SKU's mid Production order which mean the BOM for all outstanding runs on an order needs to be amended.
Whilst we are able to adjust the BOM manually in any production run, it would be great to be able utilise the amended default BOM for an SKU for all runs that take place after a BOM is amended so the user can click 'Auto Consume' and pull in the latest BOM rather than the original BOM that has been locked into the Production Order..
Maybe there can be an option to unlock the BOM attached to the production Order to allow an update. This wouldn't change any completed runs but would allow the option to amend for futrue runs when necessary.
Make sense?
Hi Elina
I would support Johns proposal as we have the same issue and find our selves undoing production orders. I had not realised you can change a BoM on the fly in a production order! This would be especially useful for packaging managing packaging changes - the other way is to put effectivity date management on BoM versions so that they change non a specified date - or even are just able to switch BoM versions during a production order?
On a similar vein. Is it / would it be possible to enable consolidation of transfers for production orders. We sent productions orders up for the week, say 8 and there are mostly duplicated materials in each of the productions orders. It would make WHM much simple if you could select then consolidate these transfers into a single transfer.
Thoughts?
KR
Eddie
Props to Eddie for pushing this through, and Elina and the Dear team for implementing it nice and fast.
Being able to switch BOM (and track that change) is important for engineering manufacturers - either as a temporary 'deviation' or as a planned change.
Hello John, Eddie, Matt,
Thank you for your suggestions.
The suggestion to change the BOM in the order on the fly is a bit tricky in the sense of what we should do with allocated components and created Purchase, Transfer Orders.
When Production Order is released, the components listed in Production BOM are allocated, Purchase Orders and Transfer Orders are created for these components.
In case if we change Production BOM then we need to reset the allocation for the unconsumed components. Purchase and Transfer orders can't be undone because we already completed these orders before the start of the Production Run (we assume that all components are delivered to shopfloor before the start of the first Production Run).
However, if we reset the allocation for the original components, we need to allocate components listed in a new Production BOM. What happens if there are no components?
What will be the most convenient solution in this case:
- to order unavailable components manually
or
- to automatically create Purchase or Transfer order for the Scheduled start date for the first not started Production Run.
We also should think about the overstock problem. In case if Purchase Order and Transfer order is completed to the shopfloor and then we change Production BOM, the components which are delivered may be not needed. So, if we leave them in shopfloor then we can have overstock problem.
Please let me know if I miss any other conditions which we should consider?
Best regards,
Elena
Hi Elena,
I understand the complexity but as long as the user is given a warning of any potential manual requirements after changing the BOM then it is functionality worth providing quickly. You can make sure the ability to amend a Production order default BOM is locked behind a permission anyway.
In terms of Purchase Orders and transfer orders, there’s no requirement to undo anything, you can auto create correction transfers (to pull in extra stock or return stock not required) and a prompt to manually amend PO’s if required can be shown on screen – a link to the PO with ‘check PO for required amendments’ will suffice.
If newly required components (from the change) are not available then that’s OK, the next run can’t be completed until they are available. The demand will come into the system and be picked up by the usual processes. Manually ordering these components is fine – it’s a fair trade off for the extra functionality.
For context; We are building to a funded production plan so we create demand (A Production Order) for large batches of the finished goods we expect to sell (and the Nested BOMs). It takes time to work through these large Orders so it requires multiple production runs.
The scheduler is a fantastic tool for us to see progress on a large batch of finished goods across all the sub-assemblies but because we see frequent BOM changes which are extremely likely to hit mid batch we need the ability to amend the default BOM on a Production Order for the outstanding runs.
The big picture view of progress against our plan is a huge benefit but not being able to amend the default BOM makes that much more complex.
To sum up - we would accept the most basic functionality to allow this BOM change with a simple warning flagged on the screen of any potential impacts for our user to check. To have this basic level of change functionality is a much better outcome than not being able to amend the default Production Order BOM.
Hi Elena - any news on implementing a master BOM change function for Production Orders?
Hello John Harley,
We are still in the process of analysis and considering possible option for implementing this feature. Changing the Production BOM in the middle of production also causes the changes in planning and scheduling: when some resource allocation is changed or the resource allocation is eliminated, the scheduling should be updated otherwise it won't reflect the reality and there will problems with planning of the other orders.
Thus, the challenge of this feature is connected not only to components allocation, but to the changes in planning and scheduling.
Best regards,
Elena
Hello John, Matt, Eddie,
I hope you are doing great.
We are analyzing the requirements on a new feature: "implementing a master BOM change function".
In connection with this, we'd like to know your opinion on the following implementation:
In case if Production Order runs should be executed by different Production BOM's, a special option (button) will be added to the order. By click this button, it will be offered to produce the remaining in the order quantity by different BOM version. A user selects the BOM version to produce the next portion of the product and a new production order with the selected BOM is created. This newly created Production Order is connected to the same Sales Order as the order from which it was created. The timelines also remain the same.
In simple words, it will be possible to split original Production Order into several orders with the selected BOM version for each order.
Please let me know if this option works for you.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
Elena
Hi Elena
this functionality sound very useful for managing changes that need to / can occur mid production such as Artwork changes, i.e. moving to different versions of an artwork Or where for example in our case we need to change from sacked raw material to fresh raw material.
So yes sound like a good proposal. Would we be able to test it prior to implementation as I am only to aware of interoperability issues between functions in DEAR?
KR
Eddie