Re: Fading out products.

There are several ways we deal with this.
----------------------------------------------------------
Advanced Ordering.
BOM bounce.
Orphan report.
Invisibility reports.
Date of last activity.
Effectivity dates.
New Ideas.
------------------------------------

For most new parts we have to have the customer approve samples before we
start full production run.  As soon as the customer approves samples,
invariably full production is needed like yesterday, but lead times on some
raw materials are like 2 months.  But until the samples approved, we do not
know exactly how we going to make it ... there may need to be some
refinements & more samples.  But we know what components involved long before
we know precisely how it will be made.

Thus we put into our customer orders what is wanted for production, when it
gets approved, in which the parts have BOM but not routings. We notify all
relevant people that this stuff is in our ORD so that the MRP will issue PUR
for raw materials in time for the full production run, but JIT & SFC are NOT
to issue production orders until our sample approval recognition staff have
finalized the routings.
------------------------------------

BOM Bounce is something we wrote that uses a combination of an added file
from RPG & some query work files.  User keys in customer # they interested
in, a range of item #s, cut-off date shipping history, and what kinds of
sub-components (e.g. raw materials only).  The software stream identifies all
end items for that customer that now have anything on order or was shipped
since the cut-off date.  It accesses BOM to find all the components of those
end items, then those components go back up the BOM for WHERE USED to compare
to the original list.

Now we have a list of components that are used ONLY on those customer parts,
selected because an engineering change is imminent, or some other business
change.  It shows what we have on hand & the standard cost & order quantity
summary status & date last shipped end item.  If none on hand, those
components not shown.

We also have a list of SHARED components ... shared with what ... the safety
stock rules may need to be changed if the customer demands are going to
change.

We are not doing this analysis religiously ... usually only when it is a
complex part getting an engineering change, or a customer has something
pending involving a model line that has a bunch of parts.
------------------------------------

Our Orphan report looks at IIM.INSEQ field to find out how many BOM records
there are on some item that has an on-hand total ... if the figure is zero,
then it has no parents & it has no children.  We would get items like this if
they were used only on some customer part that had an engineering change &
the orphans got dropped, or if there was some business we lost.  We make to
customer specifications & sometimes with the recession & other reasons a
customer might not order as much of something as they ordered last year, or
quit making some model & not let us know, then when several years have gone
by & not make something, we start cleaning up our data base.
------------------------------------

Invisibility Reports

This is a name I use to try to not confuse my end users.
We use Query/400 very heavily
If you are doing a MATCH & what you are matching with is not there, then you
won't get anything on your report.
For example, someone has a query listing parts with their costs.
We have some parts with no cost (yet).
A query that matches on cost has no match so it misses those items.
Since people not seeing those items need cost adding, it does not get done.

My invisibility reports list scenarios of no-match, that need some fixing.
------------------------------------

Date of Last Activity

Go to Menu INV option 15 then option 2 ... INV355 for us
pick any transaction ... look at lower left corner
there are a couple fields for a transaction updating date of last transaction
glue your eyes to that zone then scroll/page up/down through the transaction
types
you will see that some transactions can update this & some can opt out
be very careful to read the documentation before trying to change these rules
because there is some stuff you should not tamper with
ITE is where these rules are stored
ITH is the file that gets the history transactions

We have also been discussing some alternative ways of analysing this kind of
data.
Let's just say that we are not fully satisfied with the tools we using so far.

Most of our safety stock is in raw materials that have long lead times.

We have been doing a little bit of safety stock on those sub-assemblies that
have a high setup time, and need to make some every week.

This topic is a potential problem for us.
-------------------------------------------------------
We have customer parts in which many sub-components are common to different
places in the same end parts, same customers, other customers, so for factory
production efficiency we use same common sub-assembly item # for something
that has the same configurable description.
Some customers have volatility in engineering revisions & some business comes
& goes without much warning, so we can have orphaned components that we had
been ordering with safety stock due to long lead times, but now risk of
excess supply of what we no longer need.
Also some of our customers business is seasonal, so we do not need to have
safety stock for 3 quarters of year in some components that we will only be
using for 2 months of the year.

Al Macintyre

> Hello fellow BPCS victims.
>
>  We are using BPCS V6.1.1..
>  My question: When a parent itemt is fading out / fasing out (let's say
>  over 1 year); how can we control this easily.
>  in CIC we are using dynamic minimum stock balances for components. We do
>  not wish to have obsolete stock after fasing out, but if we put the
>  balance days = 0 & horizon days = 0 than:
>  MRP generates inmediately a safety stock = 0, which is of course
>  dangerous for business, because we still have to deliver for 1 year.
>
>  If we do not change the dynamic safety stock, we run the risk of
>  obsolete stock, because the vendor lead time to our mother company in
>  Japan is 3 months.
>
>  Please let me know your advice.
>
>  Thank you in avdance,
>
>  Roel Bakker
>  Production Planning & Procurement
>  Turbocharger Division
>  Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Equipment Europe B.V.
>  Tel:      0031-36-5388223
>  Fax:     0031-36-5388222
>  E-mail: rbakker@mhimee.nl

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)