Fwd: Kan Ban

Summary: Al suggests some areas for additional experiments, unless you already tried this stuff.

Allegedly Y"all tried something and it did not work out as expected.
So invest a few hundred bucks in a call for BPCS tech support to tell you what you were doing wrong.
You can tell them that you put safety stock on this item # and MRP ignored it ... why?
Then they will point out whatever field it is of what file we need to have different setting on.

As I understand it, the customer says they will order 250,000 in one year, they just can't predict the precise timing ... when they call and say they ready for another chunk, they want it damn fast, so we need to be making enough before the demand comes in.

Ok, consider FORECASTING ... with MRP100 you can setup a Forecast on such an item that says "let's make 5,000 a week" (5k x 50 weeks = 250k).
System Parameters (SYS800) say that Customer Orders will Consume the Forecast.
This means we are making 5,000 a week into inventory,
along comes Customer Order for 4,000 or 10,000 or whatever.
we ship to the customer on the basis of THAT customer order line
because the ForeCast has arranged in advance for MRP to plan on this even steady schedule.
Try that out on an item or two and see if that works for us.

Take a look at Order Policy K
K for Kan Ban?
This sounds like the JIT plans where you setup a repetitive "daily" factory schedule
Basically you can setup like 150 periods in which even quantities of the item are to be released through the factory

Review Ed DeHarde's suggestions again
He had one about using a Consolidated Purchase Order Release deal that would work the same way as Shop Order Release.
Perhaps we want to have a Planner Code for the stuff that crosses facilities and/or PEN needs, then have a Lee Slater "helper" running this deal for the ReSupply Order stuff.
When Lee is ready to launch POs, he would first print what his "helpers" contributed, then do his stuff (process the "helper" output first to avoid duplication)

I previously suggested Y"all look at BPCS Outside Operations
where some outfit outside of our company does some of the work and returns it to us

Review the criteria used in running MRP releaseable shop orders report
Does it list ALL items that would need shop orders?
Are there some on the list that we do not release shop orders on?

Review the criteria used in running the reports that Lee Slater uses in planning Purchase Orders
Is he getting ALL items that are coded that would need something other than shop orders?

Between the two, are there any holes in what we are not looking at?

Review the documentation on DRP ... try out DRP in the TEST environment to see if it does stuff that we need to be doing now that we have increased the volume of resupply orders

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Al Macintyre
BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/