Manufacturing

Good sales and operations planning can derive a plan on which the system’s scheduling tools can be efficiently unleashed. Having the right elements in the right place at the right time is the objective.

  • Production plan schedules can substitute for, or supplement, sales order demand.
  • Planning can be based on a forecast and may use a planning alias, permitting product family planning.
  • Sales forecasts, using daily, weekly or monthly time buckets, can be maintained and used to automatically generate a production plan.
  • Product forecasts can be generated from customer forecasts, or on a product group basis.
  • “Inactive” or secondary plans can be maintained for what-if analysis.
  • Production plan items are optionally auto-updated on sales dispatch of a product group member.
  • Forecasts can be imported from and exported to spreadsheet programs.
  • A master production schedule (MPS) can be reviewed and reported.

MRP is the scheduling tool that juggles supply with demand and produces a forecast of inventory movements. All parts and assemblies have a lead time and when combined with the BoM and a number of planning variables, this enables the system to generate a three-dimensional view of inventory use – parts x quantity x time. The system can then make recommendations on re-supply and when to manufacture products in the right quantity. When tooling use is part of the inventory, the recommendations will provide visibility of calibration timescales to critical tools and test equipment to be used in future production. Running under a fully MRPII compliant environment can dramatically improve production performance and reduce inventory costs while progressing your business towards achieving just-in-time production.

  • MRP recommends new orders, changes in order due dates, and order cancellation.
  • Purchase and assembly lead times can be globally updated based on history.
  • Option for MRP demand to include stock re-order levels, sales orders, quotations and production plan items.
  • MRP processing can ignore the dependent demand on bulk-issue items and can have optional time buckets, from one day upwards.
  • Potential sub-contract requirements can be treated as in-house work for capacity planning purposes.
  • Scheduling of purchase kit orders, with kit component planning controls.
  • MRP can be run with a delayed start, automatic report printing and terminal program exit to protect security. The process can then be run out of business hours, or in parallel with normal business activity.
  • Results can assign ABC codes to parts automatically.
  • Results can be reviewed by part number, date, adjustment code or reference, including primary supplier code.
  • A fuzzy pegging feature enables you to identify sources of demand to understand recommendations.
  • Results can generate purchase and work orders automatically.

Having run MRP, with Caliach Vision you can use the results to create purchase and work orders automatically. This feature alone can save a significant proportion of traditional management time. First you review recommendations for orders and, if you are satisfied with what is offered, one click will make the system carry out the administration automatically, saving you hours of manual administration.

  • MRP Results can be analysed to produce lists of recommended purchase and work orders.
  • Order Recommendations can be amended before order creation.
  • Order recommendations can be consolidated into the earliest date with a single click.
  • Recommendation lists can be printed for manager approval.
  • Available-to-kit analysis function is available for work order and outwork purchase order recommendations.
  • Orders can be created, printed and kit-issued en-masse.

Complementary to MRP, capacity planning looks at work order operations and the times set in process routes, along with job operations, to provide an analysis of detailed work centre activity. This forecasting tool enables you to view the loading of your production processes. Typically these would be machine or labour resources. The system assumes infinite capacity, so it does not impose changes to smooth loading, which may crucially affect customer commitments. Instead it provides a powerful graphical environment in which you can see where the bottlenecks occur and can move orders interactively to obtain the desired result.

  • Infinite capacity planning provides for a kit-to listing, work centre loading charts (with pegging) and make-to listings.
  • Option for work order scheduling to include MRP forecast orders up to a selected date.
  • Analysis can be by work centre or department.
  • Interactive windowing and work order re-scheduling.
  • An advanced feature is provided to work interactively with other capacity scheduling applications such as the Preactor product family of finite scheduling and APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) tools.

To complete the suit of forecasting tools, Caliach Vision offers a cash flow forecast and a retrospective analysis of stock movements. You can use this for powerful what-if analysis to make all manner of financial business decisions.

  • Inventory movement financial analysis to accurately view detailed cost movements over any period in history.
  • Cash flow forecasting, exclusive of ledgers, based on MRP forecast results with numerous options to tailor specific needs. The results can be graphically reproduced.
Features