Procedures for production 1

[TWong]

In the changing mindsets discussion, I have realized that I cannot change certain people due to money, ego's, or just plain unwillingness to change. Looking at my own situation, I have begun to document certain aspects of my job for my own benefit. We currently have no good system for releasing production to the shop floor. I now have a book of jobs that include the customer specs, the BOM, drawings and work instructions. As I am given these jobs, I keep adding to my book. Eventually I hope to have a complete log of all possible combinations and thereby make our company more efficient at this particular aspect of our production.

I chose this route because I could not convince my superiors to invest in good MRP system that would track these items for us. What they have purchased in a good accounting system with very little ability on the manufacturing side. Excellent payroll, AP and AR abilities, but little on the forecasting and BOM side. When this oversite was discovered, the software company decided to scramble and put together a MRP package for us. That smacks of debugging problems for a year or two. I will still maintain my system as a control of sorts, we will be calling it the Engineering BOM as opposed to the BOM in the system which can be affected by order quantities, variances, and other elements not really needed by engineering.

Question: Is this an acceptable alternative to stubborn mindsets? Or am I doing double work? Tommy

 

[rajivkrishen]

Tommy

You will yet be the messiah.

Do the stubborn mindsets leave you alone to let you pursue with the alternative? If yes, then the answer to your first poser is yes. If no, then it is double work because eventually you may have to align with the flow.

Incidentally, we are attempting similar things here. We started with work processes' improvement through meticulous recording and analysis of existing practices. Now the arena is knowledge management. rajeev krishan

 

[Miper]

It depends on the size of your company. If the company is large, you cannot do it all with your approach. Engineering will need a formal, BOM tie-in to the manufacturing system.

The unstated truth about MRP is that is amounts to a database and little more. Just make sure it's a relational database. If not, trash it now and get serious.

In a large company, manufacturing needs a lot of part numbers and assemblies that are not necessarily what Engineering designed. For example, a part may go through a dozen processes before completion. Engineering only identifies the finished part, but manufacturing has to identify it at each process stage, otherwise it isn't truly trackable. Also, manufacturing may assemble the product in ways that don't correspond to the Engineering buildup. For example, an electrical product may include a chassis, switching controls, and electronics, which engineering splits out simply as the chassis, switch box, and the electronics. But manufacturing might make the chassis in 3 parts and assemble portions of the electronics and switches in each chassis part, plugging it all together only at the end. So you need both an engineering and a manufacturing BOM.