Production and Project Management: increasing production efficiency and planning capability
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The Production modules has been designed to manage planning, progress and production control in Small and Medium Companies, operating in different product sectors; from production according to a catalog to those on a customer order (with the different forms such as engineer to order, assembly to order, make to order, purchase to order), to continuous production processes, that are typical for example in chemical or food sectors, to those based on processing centers, typical in mechanical, electrical and electro mechanical sectors.
The production and planning and supplying production of materials are based on M.R.P. (Material Requirements Planning) logic. The principal M.P.S. (Master Production Schedule) production plan consists in customer orders, open or programmed customer orders, production lists and requisition from orders that are generated by Project Management or by a mix of them.
The scheduling of activities is guaranteed by the Microsoft Project © bidirectional communication, that is used to analyze the resources activities and for the management of the “working calendar” of the different work centers and the activities and to obtain the load balancing.
There have been realized programs that, through optical reader barcodes point out the working hours on the production line and notify the execution of the working phases and the related inventory deposit with an operative logic at “finished job” or “start-stop”.
Console Workstation Management Software is an effective Business Cube production planning tool. Starting from MRP processing, it allows you to plan manual integration, order processing and order proposals. For each work center it is possible to derogate from the working days indicated in the operating calendar, choosing the cause of unavailability between those loaded on a specific table. A graphics console gives the production manager an intuitive representation for centers highlighting loading or overload situations and allows to switch to the detailed view of the relevant production orders allocated to each center. From the detail view it is possible to switch to a gantt chart, which shows the time links between the order lines. For each line of production (order or proposal), the module allows you to simulate: change the expiration / delivery date, change the work center, break the quantities. The module provides the company with a user-controlled scheduling system, perfectly integrated with production advancement programs, to optimize all manufacturing activities.
With the Product Configurator on the bill of material (BOM), it is possible to define a machine, an equipment or a complex set of elements according to specifications set by the user choosing among options and alternative variants. The configurator incorporates rules of “cohabitation” between different elements and impose eventual “constraints”, to formulate a quote containing the price of the basic components and the one of the variants and options required by the customer. Thanks to a series of connections between the entries of the choice of the configurator and the lines of the bill of material, that is defined as “neutral”, the required options are automatically translated by the system to determinate also the “technical” bill of material and the production cycles; the finished product is determined by the configurator according to options, rules, coefficients of consumption, quantity, dimensions, additional processing, presence of accessories, colors, prices, etc.
With the Project Management module, it is possible to manage articulated projects on order such as, for example, civil, mechanical, electrical and ship buildings and organizations that supply goods and services (plans for the launch of new product lines, marketing projects, research and development etc.). With this granule it is possible to manage projects and plans with tools for a punctual control and checking of the set goals; it is possible to determine the operating scheme of the Work Breakdown Structure or Project Breakdown Structure forms, describing the project and eventual contracts and references associated with it. It is possible to integrate the Project Management with the production and the MRP management. It also allows to detect separately both the movements of real time and costs in front of an asset such as accounting, inventory document output, production advances, both movements relating to forecasting operations, as for example purchase orders, quotes.
With the Size&Color Production module, it is possible to define the processing phases for each model, to manage the technical bill of material, with matching logics according to colors and sizes. Operating for projects it is also possible to plan processing and purchases of rough material and accessories according to customer orders also according to periods of overlap between samples, restocking and “ready to wear”.
This granule is equipped by many supporting tools of logistic tasks: declaration of incoming material, delivery to third parts, receipt of external centers, declaration of the internal processing and the product delivery to the customer. Special query tools allow to estimate the availability and the destination of material in storage and in order, the processing state of single products or projects, work in process among contractors.