As it concerns profit margins, inventory control is one of the more visible and appreciable aspects of the manufacturing business today. Raw materials, goods in process, and finished goods are each the visible consequences of inventory in some form or fashion, and each means actual money locked up until product is finally shipped out to the customer. The longer any of these aspects stands idle in the shop, the longer company dollars get tied up in inventory carrying costs.

Conversely, the shorter the time inventory stays on-hand, the greater are the enhancements to the bottom-line. What every inventory manager seeks is a rapid throughput and system flow of inventory, especially as a result of the supply chain stream so vital to business today. When inventory moves rapidly through the plant, (more…)

Accurate forecasting for raw materials and parts acquisition by inventory managers is an essential science in manufacturing today. With manufacturers expected to move at the speed of the Internet, processing orders, purchasing supplies, producing product, and shipping finished goods out the door must be accomplished with ever-decreasing lead times and ever-increasing expectations of quality.

It is a tightrope walk that inventory managers must take when assessing production needs as a result of sales orders and production throughput.

While customer demand can, in some instances, be anticipated based upon prior history, increased demands or slowdowns must also be contingencies planned for with regards to inventory management. In other words, (more…)

It used to be the case in job shop manufacturing that when something needed to be done, the information relating to the task was passed along the line with paper forms. Dispatch lists, routers, schedules, requisitions, and job orders were written down on hardcopies.

However, hardcopy forms often proved to be inflexible pains to change if there were hiccups in the system. Furthermore, there was always a disconnection between areas like scheduling, shop floor work centers, inventory, and shipping.

In the old days of paper forms, there was the constant problem of miscommunication—everyone in the plant was not always on the same page. The results were (more…)

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for manufacturing is, in short, the consolidation of a series of interconnected processes that when added together efficiently produce a finished product. In turn, each process has its own certain requirements that are specific to their area function—its own way of “doing things”.

For example, inventory management involves the processes of acquiring, storing, and distributing parts and other raw material to the various aspects of the operation. Shipping entails packaging and transportation of finished goods. In each instance, procedures should be developed in such a way that (more…)

One of the toughest parts of total enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in manufacturing is, perhaps, the efficient collection, storing, and analysis of data. Whether information comes from the shop floor in terms of employee time, work in progress or materials inventory, or from departments such as master scheduling or shipping, the wide variety of operational areas in a plant calls for the centralization of information. Such a notion is at the very heart of Lean manufacturing, and it is one that is important in contemporary “pull production” manufacturing operations.

Of course, the centralization of data collection for use in manufacturing software means there must be centralized data collection points useable throughout a plant. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) terminal is a tool that gives shop employees a centralized port to input and interpret production data quickly and easily.

It is more important than ever that (more…)