× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.



I could use an education in alternate ways to calculate overhead, other than basing it on actual reported labor. I am not well versed in accounting theory of what belongs in manufacturing overhead, struggling with what is in BPCSDOC with no idea how much of this correlates to APICS and GAAP.

More than half the clerical work for us, on shop floor, and labor reporting what shop floor did, is the actual time to make the product, which we track using start time and stop time ranges. We use this data for various purposes which I am trying to figure out alternatives for, so that we can eliminate this burden. One of the things we use actual time for is in calculating overhead, which our accounting and management consider essential.

Also, we recently created a facility to handle the distribution portion of our business, where we buy product for resale. Compared to our manufacturing facility, there is a small amount of handling of this product going on, but since we calculate overhead based on a percentage of direct labor costs, overhead for the new facility shows up as zero, which is not accurate ... the manufacturing facility, that hosts the distribution facility, is eating extra costs that should be allocated to the distribution facility.

How do other companies, that do not capture actual time to make the product, get overhead, or do you run your companies using overhead of zero?

I am still struggling to satisfy my management desire to lower the level of clerical support needed in the whole process of launching paperwork to our shop floor, reporting what work was done there, entering the results to BPCS, and cleaning up the shop orders. The actual people who do this work are so covered up in volume of work that is to be done, that a lot of our orders go a while in need of cleanup that is not being done, which contributes to bad data in our system.

Suggestions to management that are not satisfactory answers:
* Hire more clerical people to handle this, so that the paperwork gets to the shop floor faster, so our realistic lead time can be lowered, making us more competitive and better able to serve customers that demand shorter lead times and threaten to take their business elsewhere if we can't deliver * Invest more in continuing education so our staff utilizes BPCS more effectively, with less time wasting frustration * Buy one or more of those add-on products that make MRP more user-friendly, so we can get the clerical job done with less hassle, significantly lower our volume of bad data, and identify more of what is at risk of being past due or shortage in time to fix it with less disruption * Buy one or more of those add-on products that automates repetitive keying so that when data arrives in a machine readable format, we not need to have a human transcribe it * In other words, any suggestion to spend more money is not an acceptable answer to the implied question of "How can we get the job done with less person(s)?"

-
Al Macintyre  http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...


Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.