Re: Capacity Analysis -- BPCS-L

>  From:    JClancy@iworksoftware.com

>  I'm working with a client on defining their capacity.  The main constraint
>  is tooling, however, using that as the basis for Work Centers would
>  necessitate setting up somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 work centers.
>  Only one set of tooling exists, although it can be used on multiple
>  machines.  If WC's/capacity are defined as machine groupings then the dates
>  on Shop Orders are grossly misstated, not enough lead time is given.
>  
>  Our current approach is to define capacity in BPCS to get the correct lead
>  time on Shop Orders and find another method to assess capacity load. Any
>  ideas on approaches would be appreciated.  Are there any good third party
>  tools available that would help in this situation?
>  
>  Regards,
>  Julie Clancy
>  Education Consultant
>  Falk Int. Technologies
>  
>  Office: 1-336-852-0455 EXT: 6118

I hope that my rambling gives you some constructive ideas worth pursuing.

There might also be something in the BPCS-L archives to help you with this 
topic.  Check out
http://archive.midrange.com/bpcs-l/index.htm

There might also be some relevant education at
http://www.apics.org
http://www.bourkeconsulting.com
www.MidrangeEnterprise.com
http://www.pdmic.com/IPDMUG/index.html

My sense is that LEAD TIME has to do with materials availability & movement 
as managed by MRP, while tooling as a constraint has to do with SETUP TIME 
and the fact that there might be a mismatch between concurrent operations 
that want to use particular kinds of tooling & the actual availability of 
that constraint.  

We have modified SFC230 Dispatch Report to structure what is wanted on any 
given date grouped by all the factors that are critical to SETUP TIME such as 
jobs that need the same tooling or components are grouped contiguously.  When 
2 or more production jobs have SETUP factors in common, it reduces 
intermediate SETUP time to do them contiguously.

We do have some constraints of this kind & we have designated them as 
bottlenecks that need to be kept busy.  For example we make electrical cords 
(that is not the dominant aspect of our overall business) & can have a 
bottleneck on the machinery that does certain operations in this manufacture. 
 We deal with this by having certain fields in the item master of parent part 
populated with information about what bottleneck that part "goes through" in 
production, then when we print reports for factory management, on what is 
being currently manufactured, the parts with such bottlenecks show up clearly 
identified on their reports.

There are BPCS applications that are available at various BPCS versions that 
expand the frontiers of engineering.  We are on 405 CD.  You might review 
what is available with the version used by your client.

There is at least one 3rd party product that might help your client with this 
topic.  It is currently under development & it has to do with managing shop 
orders based on constraints on what goes into each order, so as to enhance 
factory floor productivity.  I do not know if it would help you with this or 
not.  However, I notice your e-mail address is iWork & I believe that they & 
the other vendor are fierce competitors.  It is not ready for marketing & I 
hope I am not breaking a confidence here by answering this question with what 
I know. 

Now at Central Industries, tooling is also a major constraint.  Many of the 
sub-components that we make are in plastic molding machines that require a 
particular tooling, in which various parts of that tooling (mold & 
applicator) can be used on different machines & we have various quantities of 
this in stock, but we do not represent this as a work center.  

It is in the ROUTING additional description that prints on our labor tickets, 
as something essential to the SETUP.  Prior to actual production, a setup 
person is using the labor ticket's information to get the machine ready for 
the production that is constrained by that tooling & other factors.  The 
reference here to a particular tooling is merely a field populated in a file 
that prints on labor tickets.

It can be in the BOM as a phantom with no inventory consumption.
We also have engineering changes the same way.
Thus, someone looking at our BOM can see everything that is involved in the 
production, including some stuff that really is not materials going in.
The BOM is not designating WHICH tooling to use when we have SEVERAL with 
identical capabilities, only which capability to use, so here it exists as a 
reference type & quantity available for our use.

Most of our tooling is leased & it is rather expensive, so there is great 
interest in managing that we only have in stock that tooling that there is 
current need for as our customer parts undergo engineering changes & model 
changes.  Thus the ability to run WHERE USED on our tooling, to evaluate 
which ones we should return to the vendor & which ones perhaps we should get 
more of, is an important consideration.

In addition to the above, we also have created a set of special item classes 
for tracking the usage of tooling.  When our labor is reported, the specific 
tooling used was written on the labor ticket & incorporated in what we report 
to BPCS.  This leads to some fields of that tooling item # being updated, so 
we can then run a query/400 report showing the tooling that we have in 
inventory in which facility, with serial #, whether on lease from which 
vendor, or owned out right, date of last preventative maintenance, date of 
last usage by labor, number of machine cycles since last preventative 
maintenance, number of machine cycles lifetime usage at Central.

This is via modifcation to labor reporting, with help from Crowe Chizek which 
helped us with the conversion to 405 CD.  I now have an additional 
modification in my future to-do list.  There is a need for a history of 
specific tooling usage so that there can be a correlation of scrap & other 
labor-related topics with various machines & tooling.  I am planning to use 
the labor ticket # that links FLT & ITH to also link with this future tooling 
history.

Thus, the same tooling can be in our system several different ways, for 
several different purposes.  This is a redundancy issue that bears on my 
modifications backlog.  If the routings call for doing something with a 
particular sub-component, the BOM should have that identical part, and there 
should be a way to match up the routings references with the BOM & list any 
mismatches.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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