Re: MPS - Customer Demand and General ECL Date Questions

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Paul

You are asking a lot of questions that we can answer, but for the sake of
the other people on this discussion group, perhaps the issues can be
divided into several related threads.

We have been on BPCS 405CD PTF2 with the Y2K bundle since late 1999, and on
PTF1 from mid 1998 to mid 1999, and earlier version of BPCS since late
1980's.  We are Wiring Harness make to order in which our customers are
mainly original equipment manufacturers in a variety of industries where
they have an enormous amount of fluctuation in demand.  They place customer
orders, then constantly call us to adjust the due dates, quantities on
those dates, and on top of that there are model changes and engineering
changes.

We are able to do shipments in the late afternoon or second shift for that
which completed manufacture (including quality inspection and packing for
shipping) the first shift of the same day, so we do not have your problem
of wanting to complete manufacturing one day and not do the shipments until
next day, although sometimes arranging for trucker pickup after everyone
gone home, or sending people with our stuff in their personal pickup trucks
to UPS or airport then getting the air bill numbers or whatever into our
system before the people go home, has on occasion been a bit of a hassle.

Remember when you backing things up by a day that some calendars in BPCS
are FSC shop calendar days, excluding weekends, while others like Purchase
Order performance metrics are business days with no allowance for weekends
or holidays.

We use the SCHEDULE date as a reference for promised delivery, typically 1
week backup for truck road time, but you correct the REQUIRED DATE is in
fact used by us to mean
We have got to complete manufacturing on that date or before it, and ship
it out on that date.
We do not believe that the BPCS system actually uses the schedule ship
receive dates.

The date in shop orders STARTS OUT as being the request date as mandated by
customer order request date through MRP, in which the sub components START
OUT as being a few days earlier, as mandated by the contents of FRT routing
time to manufacture components within MBM bill of mateirla.

Lead time is both purchased materials and considerations for flowing the
parts through manufacturing ... can you teleport completed parts from the
end of one operation to wherever the next operation will need them, or do
you need time for quality inspection, physically moving the parts, staging
them, setup at next operation, cleaning the equipment to purge it of what
is different between different types of components, etc.?  If you have Star
Trek Transport system then you might not need lead times within
manufacturing. :)

After shop orders are released, and work started on them, the customer
needs change, the MRP has a date recommended that is DIFFERENT from the
request date that was in there at time of shop order launch.

We have a query/400 listing shop orders in need of maintenance to scheduled
production date, based on MRP reccommendations.

Let's suppose you do not heed those MRP reccommendations.  What will happen
is that the parts will get finished manufacturing when the customer
ORIGINALLY requested them, not the latest changes to the plan.

Take a look at the MRP documentation with respect to dynamic scheduling ...
fields of IIM and CIC for example.

We use last operation 999 on final parts right before shipping for the
express purpose of shop order clean up and verification everything was done
right.

The responsibilities to keep the data accurate in our system varies with
what information.
    * As ERP/400 manager programmer computer janitor etc.  I run some stuff
every night and some stuff several nites a week, including reorgs,
modifications against MRP, MRP, CAP, CST basically blanket jobs that
refresh the data ... we run MRP500 and 600 full regeneration every weekday
evening, and change the planning date weekly
    * The customer service department is responsible to keep customer
requirements in ORD500 up to date, and to communicate with other
departments when there is a risk of lead time violation.  They also manage
some dynamic safety stock numbers based on projected aggregate customer
needs.  Any day that we have a massive volume of changes to any customer
requirements volume, such as some model or division, they notify the rest
of the company and we run a net change on affected facility as soon as they
get this caught up, but if it is close to lunch time, we run it then.
    * The production manager is responsible to keep shop orders in
accordance with MRP recommendations as the overall requirements
evolve.  One of her tools is Query/400 report showing discrepancies between
MRP suggested dates and the original request dates.  Another is our revised
dispatch report to various production departments in which the top of the
first page is a list of shop orders out there that MRP says we no longer
need, so please stop the production, confiscate the paperwork, etc.
    * The purchasing manager is also in charge of our inventory
accuracy.  He uses a modified MRP240 report, in which we reference what the
story is on the needed raw materials in our other facilities ... so
basically it says we NEED this material, and incidentally what the status
is on that needed material in other facilities ... sometimes one facility
can borrow some safety stock from another, to fill a short fall in the
consequences of customer changes in requirements with short lead
times.  That is usually cheaper than initiating a rush replacement.
>We're using BPCS V405CD(ptf2) and getting ready to begin using MPS/MRP.
>We're a discrete order job shop Die Cast manufacturer (Order Policy H on MPS
>items) and will rely on Customer Orders to drive the MPS.
>
>I see that it is the LRDTE field (Request Date) in ECL (Order line file)
>that feeds to the MPS.  The order entry department will back the transit
>(shipping) time from our shipping dock to the customer's location and enter
>that date in the LRDTE field.
>
>The challenge I have is that Shop order due dates, and planned order due
>dates as they appear in the MPS system are the same date as the REQDATE.
>This means that the system won't plan the shop orders to be finished till
>some time during the day that the order is supposed to ship out.
>
>Is the REQDATE really meant to be a "Request to complete manufacturing" or a
>"Request to Ship?"
>
>If it is in fact, a request to complete manufacturing, would I simply back
>the date up by one day. I'd love to hear from other BPCS users as to how
>their system is communicating customer requirements to manufacturing's MPS.
>
>Another way I thought I could handle it is by adding a 1 day std move time
>to the last operation. But this would mean changing the router of EVERY Item
>and every alternate router as well.
>
>Lead time is for purchase order items, correct?
>
>Also, how are the Schedule Ship Date LSDTE & Schedule Receive Dates LSCDT
>used by the system? Should these be updated after an MPS committment? If so,
>by whom?
>
>Thank You!
>
>Paul LaFlamme
>Manager of MIS
>Kennedy Die Castings, Inc.
>508-752-5234 X3044
>
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Al Macintyre
BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/
See Al http://www.ryze.com/view.php?who=Al9Mac
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