Getting the design to purchasing / production

[davidinindy]

So, Everywhere I've worked, there has been a lot of effort in getting the design to purchasing/manufacturing. One place, we hand a guy a stack of drawings, and he figures out which parts are made, and which are purchased. (distinguished by the first two digits of the part number) Here, we engineers copy the BOMs from the drawings, and separate it up into fabbed parts, and purchased parts in an Excel spreadsheet, and it multliplies it times however many items we're building. Then he colaborates it with the drawings. Sometimes a typo will throw things off, and we end up with too many parts, or not enough. It's also not very efficient.
Looking for ideas and tips on how to do this as efficiently as possible, and without the chance of mistakes.
I'm not seeing PDMWorks, or any add-ons helping with this particular aspect of things.

David

 

[Updraft]

You need an ERP or MRP system for the business software. It should run everything including inventory, purchasing, orders, shipping, cash flow, labor - everything. The product BOM should be entered into this system with the parts indicated for purchase or in-house manufacture.

Put some research into ERP/MRP. There are systems out there even for small firms.

- - -Updraft

 

[MadMango]

Your Planners and Purchasers should be the ones determining which are purchased or made parts. Engineering should only be concerned about the parts meeting specifications.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of these Forums?

 

[TheTick]

Yeess... but no...

DFM is especially important to optimize qualit and cost of parts amde in-house. The sooner this decision is made, the better.

 

[ajack1]

The best way to avoid mistakes is to remove human involvement.

 

[TheTick]

No matter how "automated" this process is, it still comes down to painstaking attention to detail. An automated process is only as good as its inputs (GIGO), inputs which also require close attention.

Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots said it best: "Making a list and checking it twice."

 

[ctopher]

I agree with the others.
Leaving purchasing to only purchasing, and not involved with engineering details, will help.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

 

[NTME76249]

The way we do it is to have a unit of measure property in the BOM, EA, FT, SF, we then have a property of the calculated amount of material. so for EA, we know these are purchased parts and it is the QTY used in the assemble. For pipe and bar that comes in sticks we calculate how many feet are in each part and multiply it times the number of parts. For plate and other items that comes in sheets we calculate the squarfootage (if that's a word) times the number so to keep track of how much plate. it works well for us to send to purchasing so they know what comes from where. for parts that we could build in house but want to buy them out we make a custom part number and apply and EA Qty to them. Hope it helps

Michael McMillan

http://cadtechie.blogspot.com/