Raw Material Best Practice

[NBradbury]

I am new to the forum and I tried to do a search on my question but I could not find anything.
Our company is currently in the process of reorganizing our entire process from engineering/drafting to production control and purchasing. One of the sticking issues has to do with Raw Materials and how to handle the callout of material to be used on the drawing vs. what purchasing actually orders.
We have a link between our drawings and out engineering masters so the information on the drawing gets pushed to the database. We deal with many aluminum extrusions and our suppliers stock them in particular lengths depending on our sales forcast and past purchasing history.
One school of thought is to have a part number for each length of extrusion and then the drawing would call out the part number for the length that is just longer than needed. This means that if our suppliers start stocking different lengths we would have to revise the drawings.
The other thought is to have a single part number for each profile of extrusion. The drawing would call out that number along with the minimum required length. That information would get sent to the supplier and they would send the appropriate lengths.
Does anyone have any insight or industry standard for handeling raw materials and purchasing?
Regards,
Nathan

 

[MadMango]

In a previous life when I had to deal with extrusions, we handled it as your second option.

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

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

 

[ptruitt]

I suggest creating an engineering document (not part) for the cross section. Either on the same document or on other documents that reference the cross-section document, define the part. For instance: One part number might relate to a 200 mm extrusion. It might include notes like "Break all sharp edges...Parts to be supplied in individual poly bags." The next part might represent a one meter extrusion. The 200 mm part might be a cut-to-length part purchased complete for one application. The 1 meter part might be raw stock with a fractional usage on BoMs for parts fabricated in-house. Document revisions should relate to the documents, not the parts.

 

[swertel]

Rarely do I recommend a smart numbering system. But I would create a base part number for each profile and the dash number would represent it's length. It's basically your second option.

--Scott

http://wertel.eng.pro