Re: 24 hour operation

[Al Mac <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Negotiations may be helped if you consult with the various people &
departments that will most be impacted if certain jobs you now run every
night get postponed to be run only on weekends.

For example, if MRP is moved from daily to weekly, it will probably most
impact the purchasing of raw materials.  More money will have to be spent
on safety stock, because you will not have timely information on changing
requirements.  Can Production Control release all the shop orders they need
from MRP at the beginning of the week, and manage everything else
manually?  I suspect that these other departments may say that THEY have to
have MRP every night.

Make a list of who benefits from stuff that is run every night, and what
the risks are if these things are not done.  From there it should soon be
seen what can be done weekly, and what needs windows, how big the windows
are, and to what degree they appear to be disruptive to the 24-hour access
needs, justifying more sophistication of backup hardware, or not.

It may be that you can come up with a schedule in which certain things are
going to be done at 1st 2nd 3rd shift lunch times on different days of each
week, such as shop order purge, standard cost rollup, weekly reorg,
etc.  Plan on shutting down system access while this is done.  The work
force may be appreciative if they get longer lunch periods as a result.

-
Al Macintyre (macwheel99@sigecom.net via Eudora)