About Receiving

See Flags That Affect Receiving Functions for details on how company settings affect receiving processing.

In addition, the default location, grade standard, and shipment method for purchased goods is set in the General Company Setup (STCOMP), General tab. For goods received with defects, the default code standard is also set there.

Receiving has these main objectives:

• It adds material to inventory
• It records the Genera Ledger transaction for the value of the inventory received
• Until inventory is received and checked, the invoice for the PO that ordered the materials should not be paid

The receiving menu contains 6 functions:

1. Enter Receipt
2. Enter Consumable Receipts
3. Enter In-Transit Inventory
4. Enter Mill Heat Info
5. Receipt From Consignment
6. Confirmation Receipt

Each of these functions is described in the associated Links

Receipt Types

Receipts of the following types can be generated:

• Purchase Order (receiving material purchased through a PO)
• Customer-Owned Material (receive material owned by the company and received for internal processing or storage)
• Customer Return (receive material sold to a customer as part of a sales order and currently has a claim against it)

• Miscellaneous (receive material for internal purposes such as physical inventory count or opening balance
• Transfer – receive from another company location

Receipt Structure

All receipts have the same structure regardless of order types.  Certain pieces of information may, however, differ or be optional depending on the receipt type. There are also some differences in the way SEMS handles each type of receipt.

Each receipt has a header and one or more line items. The header contains information that applies to all line items. Each line item includes information regarding a single steel product or single consumable item being received.

About Production

The production process has a number of very useful capabilities that manage the complexity of production and support accurate planning and scheduling processes. In general, the journey from input materials to finished goods follows a pattern or sequence, with plenty of variation possible.

The production process is initiated by two demand streams:

1. Sales Orders
2. Independent Work Orders

(Note that a number of flags affect production processes.)

Normal Production Sequence

1. A sales order is entered and confirmed, specifying the required finished items, (or an Independent Work Order is created).
2. For each requirement, a SOI is created, requesting a weight or number of pieces of finished material product.
3. For each SOI, a WO is created, specifying the work steps and sequence that are required to process from the input material to the required finished material.
4. Each step requires specialized processing that is accomplished at a work center with the appropriate equipment to perform the required operations.
5. The work center’s list of grouped work orders  is called a Production Order. A single production order may contain work steps from a number of work orders for different customers or for a number of  Independent Work Orders.
6. A processing plan may be associated with a Production Order  to provide details of exactly what to do at each step in production. There are four types of process - Manufacturing, specifiying production Recording, Packaging to describe the packaging process, Transfer, to transfer inventory between locations and Shipping to request and schedule shipments
7. A group of production orders is scheduled through a Production Schedule.
8. Production demand planning is used to monitor the work steps for each work order through the production process, including the allocated input and output material weights from each step.
9. Production Recording is performed as each Production order is processed. Production Recording records start and stop times, the materials actually used and the WIP produced. It also specifies the production loss or wastage that occurred during the production process.
10. Specific material tags can be allocated to the work steps at any stage: during sales order entry, in the Production Order,  or when production recording begins. Production cannot be recorded without the application of real material, however production planning can use dummy tags or generalized ICI specification as placeholders to plan production processing in advance of the actual tagged material being known. As real tags are created, they replace the dummy tags orICI specifications in the production process.
11. When all works steps preceding  the ship or transfer step have been completed, the finished materials are packaged (if packaging is required) and if the production is for a Sales Order, shipped using the Load packaging and shipping process. Finished materials for Independent Work Orders may be added to inventory or transferred.
12. If the production is for a Sales Order, Invoices are created when the material is shipped.

See About Production Processing Exceptions for details about variations to the standard production process

About Inventory

Use the Inventory module to control the steel products inventories (work in process inventory and finished goods inventory), consumable items inventories, and scrap inventory.

Steel Products: may include merchandise steel products (purchased for resale which form is not altered prior to resale) and job-specific steel products that require further processing before completion and sale. Inventory item is not defined prior to receiving. When received, each item is given a unique tag that becomes the item identifier.

Consumable Items: office supplies, janitorial supplies, shipping supplies, equipment maintenance supplies etc. Inventory Item is completely defined in item setup.

The Company Setup form determines if a reason code is required when inventory item cost is adjusted (on Inventory form) and what the default adjustment codes should be.

There are two types of costing in SEMS:

• Product Costing (or Actual Costing), which is used for the costing of individual inventory items and is the cost that will be booked to the General Ledger.
• Standard Costing, which is used at the time of Sales Order entry to provide an estimated cost of a Sales Order item. It is not used for any accounting purposes other than providing an estimate for the margin of a Sales Order .

Site Setup and Company Setup may affect costing.

About Product Costing

Product Costing is used for the costing of an individual inventory item, and is the cost that will be booked to the General Ledger. In short, it is made up of the actual landed cost of an inventory item, including applicable freight-in, taxes, duties, brokerage, handling and other charges incurred in bringing the item into a facility.

If an inventory item has been processed, the processing cost will also be included in product costing. Processing cost is calculated based on the actual time of processing and / or processed weight (captured in SEMS Production Recording) multiplied by the standard processing rates as defined by the user. If processing is done off-site, whether at the company‘s facility or by an outside processor, the freight in / out will also be included in the product cost.

Because most of the components in Product Costing are based on actual costs, with the exception of standard processing rates, Product Costing can also be considered as Actual Costing.

About Standard Costing

Standard Costing is meant to provide an estimated cost of a SOI so selling price and margin can be gauged accordingly. Standard costs are meant to be approximation of the actual costs only. As such, they are not as accurate and detail as the Product Costing.

Standard Costing is generated at the time of order entry. After all the relevant information for an order item has been entered, including completing the work instructions, click Calculate Cost at the bottom of the form to obtain the standard cost for the item. If using a price table to get the selling price for the SOI clickingGet Price will also calculate the standard cost. In the example below, the standard cost for the item is $44.73 / cwt versus a selling price of $52, providing an estimated margin of $7.26 / cwt.

Right-click on Cost to drill down to the make-up of the cost.

SEMS Overview of Flow

SEMS is a management system for processing steel from initial quote through shipping and collection of payment. Some business rules regarding the process flow can be amended by site specific flag settings, however the standard process flow is:

Compete on equal terms with industry leaders, use the tools they use

Component module

1. Inventory
   1. Manage Inventory to maximize value, customer satisfaction and ROI. SEMS provides the most comprehensive metals-industry specific inventory management capability. This focus and ability infuses every related business module and process.
   2. Gain the advantage of practical, advanced and comprehensive processes for metal processing inventory management, including handling shape and attribute-based properties.
2. Order Entry
   1. Seize a sales and business advantage in processing orders through a combination of capabilities:

1. i.      Comprehensive metals-specific customer requirement specification
2. ii.      Advanced competitive and comparative pricing and costing ability to win the right quotes
3. iii.      Management and monitoring of production to meet customer expectations every time
4. iv.      Production and inventory delivery planning that can deliver on time.
5. Get the financial control you need to run your company effectively from a fully integrated advanced accounting system of your choice
6. Take control of operations with immediate and real-time review and summation of:
   1. purchase invoices
   2. receipts
   3. accurate inventory values in multi-locations and transit
   4. sales based on shipment, storage or toll processing
   5. freight
   6. credit and debit notes
   7. Accurate records of Production transformation of inventory, including scrap and production loss ratios

1. Management Reporting
   1. In these challenging times, understanding the flow and trends in your business are exceptionally important. You require information summaries that are based on real-time data with drill-down capability that will quickly identify issues and problems and provide you with the ability to make an early impact and right the ship. SEMS places critical information in your hands for decisions today based on today’s data.
   2. Gain control of multi-plant, multi-location business with consolidated reporting and effective comparative data that identifies potential problems immediately.
2. Production
   1. Manage the production resources effectively; demand a clear view of order requirements, inventory availabilities, planned shift time, competing order priorities, throughput rates and critical dates.
   2. Enhance the critical customer relationship that relies on delivering what you promise. Monitor and plan each work centre, which potentially represents a road block or bottle neck to a multi-million dollar order.
   3. Do every small thing right to provide customer satisfaction and gain dramatic competitive advantages.
   4. Gain the ability to handle shape transformation and complex fabrication steps which are just two of the advanced abilities in SEMS that make production effective.
3. Purchasing
   1. Buy what you really require, no more, no less. Understand the very dynamic relationship connecting what you buy and what you sell in determining purchasing needs.
   2. Know what inventory you can handle by including production capacity availability in the purchasing decision.
   3. Make appropriate and accurate purchasing decisions based on Inventory demand planning
   4. Gain an inherent business advantage from purchasing inventory that matches your process requirements, like delivery direct to outside processors or staged delivery.
4. Comprehensive ERP modules
   1. Claims
   2. Costing
   3. EDI
   4. Fabrication
   5. Inventory
   6. Production
   7. Purchasing
   8. Quality
   9. Receiving
   10. Management Reporting
   11. Sales Order
   12. Shipping
   13. Warehouse operations
   14. Business process definition
   15. Setup
5. Accounting

1. 1. Integrate with Oracle EBS or AccPac (or your current accounting system)
2. Oracle
   1. Go with the leading product. Oracle is the number 1 Relational database with 48.6% share (Gartner 2007)
   2. Be secure in your technology Investment. As Oracle business partners, Steelman has 100% support for all customers in all aspects of business systems deployment and operations.
   3. See www.oracle.com
3. Logistics
   1. Increase load efficiency and reduce shipping costs by pre-planning loads, optimizing delivery routes and managing dispatch scheduling.
   2. Remove a bottleneck by automatically scheduling packaging as a work center operation.
   3. Reduce processing delay by automatically adding transfers to the routing for operations in different locations
   4. Gain greater inventory control by using metals industry specific receiving procedures including receiving in transit.
   5. Reduce the overhead of paperwork by capturing all shipping documents and associating them with the Bill of Lading
   6. Increase efficiency and track inventory in real time through RF bar code scanning support for receiving, inventory movement, inventory reconciliation and shipping.
4. Adaptability to your business
   1. Customization to fit your business without changing standard core code to keep your version of SEMS standard and upgradeable.
   2. Build in your business control by making SEMS work the way you work, by using extensive set-up and business process options for almost every aspect of your business
   3. Expand international operations through support for Mexican operations and local Government regulations and requirements