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

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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

CASE STUDY

By Sherri Telenko - Manfuacturing Automation

October 2004

Parkdale International Limited is part of a volatile industry. Recently, the Hamilton Ont.-based company went from a system that saw shop-floor employees using pen and paper to a fully automated data-and-inventory management software package integrated throughout the entire throughout the entire operation. The upgrading team worked with Toronto-based STEELMAN Software Solutions Inc.

Parkdale’s business is steel, an industry experiencing unprecedented global fluctuations. The company specializes in buying and selling devalued carbon steel products, primarily flat rolled. Extensive evaluation of every shipment is necessary, and often the product is slit or sliced into sheets. But this process isn’t simple.

“We may get a coil that’s 10,000 pounds and a customer wants sheets out of it,” says Stephen Margles, sales manager. Parkdale. “As we are running it out, part way through, we get some bad steel. Our machines are set up to separate the good from the bad and we steel the piles to different customers.” Previously this change was noted on a piece of paper and forwarded to accounitng. The company need a reliable system that would note the input item and divide the cost appropriately between each bundle.

“We put a lot of responsibility on our operations side to do their job properly,” Margles says. “With this software, we’ve given them the tools to do not just the physical labour, but the computer data entry which makes everyone’s job easier.”

Embedded with the Oracle 10g infrastructure software, STEELMAN’s suite of products includes warehouse management, manufacturing control and quality assurance, and it is designed for suppliers and prossors of steel and other metal products. According to Daniel Brody managing director, STEELMAN, “At an integrated mill that does everything, the system will take production from the liquid pot with its chemistry and apply it to the appropriate orders, then move it through the facility based on those orders.”

Other companies sell similar software but Parkdale says it selected STEELMAN because of the service they provide and flexibility of the product, Margles says. “Other companies weren’t as receptive to modifying their systems,” he says.

As with any new automation, the first few months weren’t perfect. The development team need to alter the reports that the system was producing, and servers needed to be coordinated. Margles offers this advice to anyone thinking of implementing a similar process: Don’t start by using parallel systems. “That was a disaster,” he says.

A mid-size company, Parkdale started almost 50 years ago as an extension of a family-run scrap metal business. Today, it is a lean automated operation. In one year, Parkdale went from Flintstone to Jetsons, according to Margles. “We hadn’t been keeping up with technology. Now we have more than we need, but we want to be able to adapt quickly to change.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Software solutions prove efficient

By ADRIANNE HARTLEY, SUN MEDIA

Many industries face logistical challenges, but with the help of supply-chain orientedsoftware, challenges are being met head on. Richer Systems Group Inc. offers one suchsoftware solution, Enrich, which is used throughout North America by companies in thecommercial transportation field.It features online, real-time data processing to give clients up-to-the-minute information fromany area of their operation, regardless of size and number of facilities — from front-office operations to maintenance and materials to lease and rental information.”Information is playing a more important role than it ever has before in the success of ourcustomers in this industry,” says Tim Bowes, vice-president of sales and services withRicher Systems Group Inc.”The need to provide more information increases in order to make the supply chain moreefficient.”Bowes says a specific solution is vital for most companies, because there is morecompetition in the marketplace.Also, as companies outsource to other companies, the need for information and progressreports on operations must easily be generated beyond just invoicing.”A consolidated system provides accurate and timely data back to customers,” he says.Enrich consolidates transactions so that companies can provide key performance indicators to their customers.”The supply of information is becoming critical in this age, and the ability to collect it and make sure it’s accurate and then deliver it in a timely fashion is what Enrich does,” saysBowes.In the steel industry, Steelman Software Solutions Inc.’s Steel Enterprise ManagementSystem Version 4 creates a collaborative environment for customers, suppliers andprocessors of steel and other metal products.In the past, the metals industry kept track of inventory with a series of cumbersomedatabases.Steelman’s system makes sense of all the confusion by delivering end-to-end solutionsbased on industry best practices as well as their customers’ unique operating practices and processes.”This is very current and specific enterprise resource planning technology designed to suitthe steel marketplace,” says Daniel Brody, managing director of Steelman.