Re: Shop Floor Control in BPCS -- BPCS-L

what are the affects on  the other modules in terms
of data accuracy and functionality if I am not using
the Shop floor control in BPCS.

Mand

A related discussion thread might be in what ways SFC JIT etc. do not do an adequate job of data accuracy, data mining, granular detail, data intelligibility, for which enhancements / modifications / add-ons are essential.

What version of BPCS are you on, and what kind of a company? We are a manufacturer and engineer to customer order using 405 CD. We use a mixture of JIT and SFC ... we use CST900 to purge our completed shop orders. We run MPS MRP full regeneration every nite, CAP regen twice a week, DRP never regen. We have several modifications throughout the process.

I think that for our volume, either or both of SFC and JIT are essential, along with accuracy in posting/reporting on shop orders progress, and also INV, for inventory accuracy (components consumed, WIP); for knowing what our production is costing the company; and for tracking our ability to meet customer schedules.

We also use our labor reporting tickets outside of BPCS to help track repair of WIP ... where quality rejects some work, but it is not so far gone that it has to be scrapped.

One of our modifications has been to use labor reporting to track tooling usage, which ties into our preventative maintenance.

There is some granularity that affects our costs, that we are not tracking, such as setup time. Recently we have been accepting smaller orders, in which setup is much more critical to the costs, and I wonder if there is a way to have the system budget a fixed setup cost on all parts, like is possible to budget with scrap factors and yield. We do track precise scrap consumption.

For us, setup time cost is irrespective of volume to be made. Some of our operations are extremely fast, so that if we are making thousands quantity, setup impact on unit cost is insignificant. The acceptance of tiny orders is a trade-off between the cost of materials tied up in making quantities that won't be needed right away, but setup not significant cost, vs. making in small quantities to keep a customer happy. I do not believe we are getting the granularity of detail from BPCS right now to help make that kind of decision properly.

There are some one time customer ordered parts, that the powers that be decided to manufacture without running through all the BPCS. For those items we do not have accurate costing, and I have my doubts that we have accurate inventory on their components. We also have some items for which manufacturing gets started before engineering gets completed.

I think it would be possible for a similar company to use SFC+INV without JIT and get all the benefits of JIT ... what JIT does for us is to simplify the human work load of data management and entry.

I think it would be possible for a similar company to use JIT+INV without SFC and get all the benefits of SFC ... what SFC does for us is to simplify the making of corrections, adjustments, and dealing with very hot customer requests.

For some customer parts that can in fact be made in a very few days, when we have the raw materials in house, we can accept a customer order, and immediately start production on it (using SFC) without waiting on MRP or JIT mass planning. I do not believe that agility would be practical without SFC. But if your company does not need agility, then perhaps you can do without SFC.

Of if you do not need the same granularity of costing and inventory accuracy that we want, then perhaps you can manage without SFC or JIT, or whatever is the equivalent in the later versions of BPCS.

- Al Macintyre BPCS/400 Computer Janitor at http://www.globalwiretechnologies.com/ See Al at http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac Emergency notification (homeland, weather, etc.) http://www.emergencyemail.org/ Find BPCS Documentation Suppliers http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html