RE: Labor Load for customer orders

Hi Al,
Please  see my comments below:


> Daniel Warthold P. eng CPIM
Business Analyst
> Eicon Networks Corporation            
>                                       
> 9800 Cavendish blvd                   
> Montreal (Quebec)                     
> Canada H4M 2V9                        
>                                       
> Tel:   (514) 832-3839                 
> Fax: (514) 745-5588
> Email: daniel.warthold@xxxxxxxxx      
> 


-----Original Message-----
From: Alister Wm Macintyre [mailto:macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 17:52
To: SSA's BPCS ERP System
Subject: Re: [BPCS-L] Labor Load for customer orders


Bob

It is first important to know what applications the customer is running.

If you do not have good engineering (BOM and Routings) on the Customer 
Parts that you want to know how much labor needed to get the job done, then 
you might as well forget about using BPCS to figure that out for you.

We have MRP which takes the work that is needed to be done whether shop 
orders released or not, and calculates all components due when, assuming 
the BOM and Routings are reasonably accurate, then we run CAP which looks 
at the planned requirements that exist on the stuff for which no shop 
orders released yet, and at the cases where there are shop orders out 
there, and figures how many labor and machine hours needed to make all the 
parts involved.

Actually if shop orders have been released, this can complicate the picture.
Let's suppose a customer order is due middle of March and shop orders are 
released so that we will make the part on time.
Let's suppose the customer changes mind and says now they need it last week 
of Feb.
The MRP says that the shop order for the end customer part perhaps should 
be finished sooner, but says nothing about the sub-assemblies should be 
made sooner.  The MRP assumes we know what we are doing by not pulling up 
all the orders for the components needed to meet the revised customer 
schedule ... we have to be looking at reports or inquiry that tell us that 
our planned date is no longer the right date, then when we fix due date on 
end item, the MRP replans ONE LEVEL DOWN, so depending on the complexity of 
our parts, we cannot be responsive to changes in customer desires.

Unless we look at the MRP differences report rigorously, make lots of 
maintenance changes, and update paperwork on shop floor, then rerun MRP net 
change to get the new story, look at new differences, rerun MRP net change, 
look at new differences.  Keep up the loop until no more differences 
needing action.  And that's why some companies buy RPM so they find out all 
the differences one time, fix them all, be done with it, and dramatically 
lower the risk of being past due on orders where we told the customer that 
we could make it on time.


**********************************
Comment: 

On V6 at least, the effectivity dates on the BOM is compared with the
MRP/MPS planning start date to decide if the components are to be included
or excluded. If a new component is added on a Thursday, but the MRP planner
has a habit of running MRP with a start date on Monday for example, the new
component will not be planned.

***********************************


Now there can be some problems with past due stuff vs. the dates used in 
planning.
For example, if a customer order is past due when it is entered, does MRP 
CAP plan it properly, or say that it is due RIGHT NOW?
Or suppose a new part comes in, and is engineered using effectivity date of 
TODAY, and the lead times are such that we should have ordered the 
materials 30 days ago, only we did not know 30 days ago that we would have 
this order, will the MRP correctly call for the requirements, when they 
were due before the date that we got this new item and had the effectivity 
date on the day we got the new part?
I don't think so.
Many BPCS fields default to values other than what the company wants ... 
for example, do you want MRP to plan these items or ignore them?  BPCS 
default is to ignore them.

So the engineering on all the parts have to be correct, run the MRP and CAP 
with valid planning dates, and now the associated work files have the grand 
total labor hours needed to make all the parts, whether or not anything 
other than customer orders have been entered, and you can look at that 
detail by end customer item using SFC350, or write a query to study 
contents of the L* CAP work files ... we have queries that show # of wires 
to be cut (our first operation) by customer by facility by date due, with 
CAP computed # of hours needed by week, so we can plan staffing people in 
different departments of the factory based on the work volume anticipated.

We made a modification so we could track what end items and their 
components for what end customers ... I do not believe that capability 
comes with BPCS.  We needed this because as parts approach completion, we 
can have a capacity problem combined with fluctuation in customer demand 
that we want to finish some customer parts first, and see what is needed to 
do so.

We also found some fields in item master that we could add some info about 
the part (we could use some more fields like that), then use the contents 
of those fields TIMES customer order data to help manage factory load.  For 
example, a small part of our business is electrical cords, so that means we 
not have much capacity for the electric wall plug socket construction ... 
but when we do get a bunch of orders on that, it can rapidly turn into a 
bottleneck, so we put some codes on the end customer item to say that at 
some point in the production they go through this bottleneck, and put that 
info on relevant reports, so that the right people know about it, and not 
let the bottleneck go idle when there is work that could go thru it.

In one of our modifications, we created a new file that has in it a 
combination of facility customer end item that we sell that customer, and 
there is a field = # of hours to make one of those parts, ignoring the 
impact of scrap or setup time.  Then we have a program that goes down the 
BOM to get at all manufactured components of the end item, then look at the 
routings to calculate how long to make one item, and factor in the number 
of copies of that component needed in the final assembly.  The program to 
recalculate this based on current customer orders can be run at any time on 
JOBQ.

Then with that info updated ... hours needed to make end items, ignoring 
setup and scrap and move time, which depends on the quantity and common 
efficiencies, we are then able to run a report off of customer orders left 
to ship, to get a broad idea of the total hours by end item with sub-total 
on customer.  This does not subtract based on WIP already completed ... it 
is just a big picture overview of CAP simulation by customer, without 
allowing for MRP date staggering.



******************************
Comment:

That looks like Rought cut capacity planning. Was Rough cut capacity
planning not a good tool to use for this purpose?


*******************************


But if the customer is not using MRP DRP CAP, or not using them properly, 
but does have good engineering accuracy, then this approach might be taken.

, you wrote:
>Perhaps I did not make myself clear in what we are looking for.
>We have a backlog of customer orders that have come in.  We would like to
>know how many labor hours it will take to produce the products on those
>customer orders. This is not looking at what we have done for product
>already made but what will it take to produce enough of an item to meet the
>customer orders we have still open.
>
>It sounds to me like we should be using Capacity Planing but I don't think
>that is set up to be used at all.
>
>I was hoping to be able to create a query or a quick program to produce the
>number of labor hours required to fill existing customer orders.
>
>TIA,
>Bob
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: bpcs-l-bounces+rsmith17=carolina.rr.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:bpcs-l-bounces+rsmith17=carolina.rr.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
>Of Bob Kohlndorfer
>Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 3:43 PM
>To: BPCS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [BPCS-L] Labor Load for customer orders
>
>
>BPCS v6.02
>We are looking to find the amount of labor it will take to produce the
>items ordered by customers. The Customer Orders have not yet been turned
>into Shop Orders so I cannot get the information from the FSO file for
>Labor Hours remaining. Is there an easy way to find how much labor it
>will take to produce a certain item or items (by item class) for the
>open customer orders on our system?
>
>TIA,
>Bob
>--

Al Macintyre  http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac

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