Manufacturing
In common with many more expensive large scale systems, uzERP manufacturing management is very flexible and adapts well to different business models. A certain amount of pre-planning is strongly recommended to get the system working for your organisation.
Particular attention needs to be paid to the stock system. We suggest that a Stock Map is developed prior to implementation of the system. This will assist in defining the relationships between stores and locations and producing a view of how stock moves between them.
Warehouse Management
The warehouse management system is where the set up of Stores, Locations and Bins takes place. A Store can have many Locations, and a Location can have many (optional) Bins.
In addition the system uses a double-entry method to track stock - such that any movement affects two locations. For instance receipts of goods come from a purchase location into a stock location. For this reason some locations can be treated as No Balance locations.
Important
The system requires at least 1 warehouse and 2 location codes to function. If this approach is not taken, little meaningful information will be available and several of the manufacturing functions may not work properly.Stores
A store usually represents a distinct warehouse or manufacturing site. There must be a least one store although you might decide to have a separate store for each site on which you do business, plus each facility within the site. Each store has a store code, description and address. The fist two are mandatory, with the address being selected from the range of addresses set up against the system company.
It is a good idea to relate the names of the facility and store, for example:
- BW - Bridgewater Warehouse
- FIN - Finished store
- NEW - New Works
- MAIN - Main warehouse
Locations
Locations sub-divide stores and are used for controlling and analysing stock, both numerically and financially. They show where the stock actually is, how it moves and where it sits around.
Bin Control
Bins sub-divide Locations. They may identify a rack and positions within the rack, or they may be just areas marked out on the floor. You don’t need to define bins in a location - especially if you have some other way to tell where things are.
It’s worth noting here that bin control is specified at the Location level. That is, you decide which Locations in each store are to be bin controlled. Every time a stock transaction addresses a bin-controlled location, the bin number will be requested by the system. If the location is not bin controlled, no bin is requested. This means that a store’s receiving or inspection areas needn’t be bin controlled while the raw material store could be.
Product Groups
Within the stock system Product Groups can be used for analysis. There must be at least one product group in the system as this is a mandatory field for each stock item. The database allows for a product group code AND description which can be used to group stock items for further analysis.
Type Codes
Type codes can also used to group stock for analysis purposes in conjunction with Product Groups.
However, the type code of an item is also used in conjunction with Actions to determine which actions are taken when specific procedures are called for a particular stock item when using manufacturing management or sub-contracting. In particular, actions control where stock is put on Works Order completion, whether parts used are backflushed and where to issue excess usage.
- Type code - a short code for the stock type
- Description - full description
The following fields affect the manufacturing processes:
- Completion Action - the action to be used when completing a works order this item type. This is used for manufactured items where you want to specify the action to move stock that has been made against a works order.
- Backflush action - if you wish to backflush the standard bill of materials for a manufactured item the action to be used to backflush parts is entered here.
- Issue action - the action to be used if manual issue of parts to a works order is required for this item type - used where backflushing is not in force AND to enable over/under usage bookings to works orders.
Unit of Measure
The UoMs section allows you to set up the units of measure applicable to your organization. These are used in the stock, ordering and invoicing systems. there must be at least one UoM for the system to function correctly. The system is delivered with default UoMs such as Kilogram, metre and gram.
Unit of Measure Conversions
uzERP allows you to define conversions between UoMs for use in the stock system. Once a UoM has been set up, you can specify default conversions between UoMs which will apply on a system wide basis. Obviously certain conversions are fixed e.g. a Kilo contains 1,000 grammes, but you can also specify here conversions that are unique to your company. For instance if you always supply your products in cases of 6 you could set up a UoM conversion such that CASE contains 6 PACKS.
Further flexibility is provided where different products have different UoM conversions since uzERP allows item-specific conversions to be entered during item setup. As long as the UoMs have been specified then the conversion can be set up.
Actions and Transfer Rules
Once the stock map is defined you need to set up the Stock Actions that describe how stock will move between locations. They are also referred to as Menu Actions because they can be made to appear on a appear on a menu.
Important
Each Stock Action requires at least one Transfer Rule that actually drives the movement to be performed. This contains a from warehouse/location and a to warehouse/location. Some actions can have more than one transfer rule to give the operator choices of movement.Transfer Actions have four characteristics:
- Action name (short code, e.g. “Issue”)
- Description of what the action does (e.g. “Issue stock from warehouse to line-side”)
- Label for the movement (e.g. qty issued)
- Action Type
The Action Type determines the stock movements and additional processing for key operations as follows:
| Action Type | Max. Rules | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Backflush | 1 | Automatically issue the bill of material quantities of a manufactured or subcontracted item |
| Completion | 1 | Triggered whenever goods are received against a work order |
| Issue | 1 | Used specifically to issue stock to a works order in combination with, or as a replacement for, backflushing |
| Return | 1 | Determines the movements for returning stock issued to works orders |
| Despatch | 1 | There must to be at least ONE despatch action, its transfer rule determines the stock movement that occurs when goods are sold |
| Receive | 1 | The stock movements to be performed when goods are received against a purchase order |
| Manual | As needed | Manual actions appear on the menu action screen and are used for sundry stock movements |
| Warehouse Transfer | N/A | Transfer between warehouses |
Important
Please note the maximum number of transfer rules per action in the table above. Some actions must have only one transfer rule.Setting the location for goods received
When goods are received against a purchase order they are automatically added to the stock balance at the location defined by the receive action for the order.
An action must be added with a type Receive - if you want to receive against an order the type must be Receive and there must be only one transfer rule for the action. Once added, select the action in question and in the side bar select Add Rule. The transfer rule for the action can then be added.
It is possible to have multiple receive actions so that stock can be received into different warehouse/location combinations. The option will appear in the Receive Into drop down on the order - you can default this by supplier so that goods received from that supplier will, by default, be received into a particular location using the supplier’s Receive Into option.
Making actions unavailable
An action can be made inactive by removing all of its transfer rules. For example, a company may have defined several receiving actions and now wants to ensure that one of those choices is not available when entering new purchase orders. Care should be taken that there are no open orders that need to use the action being changed.
Manufacturing Management
uzERP allows you to control many aspects of the manufacturing environment including specifying routes and operations for your products, managing shop floor paperwork, collecting data and reporting on manufacturing performance.
Departments and Workcentres
You can set up as many departments as your organisation requires and within each department you can set up multiple workcentres - these could represent groups of machines, a linked set of processes or a single machine station. Each workcentre can be allocated a recovery, or charge-out, rate to recover the cost into products.
Departments may have production recording enabled - this means that they are included in the production recording system and can have actual time recorded against them. This gives the flexibility to have a group of workcentres included on a route and therefore costed into a product, but not have actual time booked via the production recording system.
Resources
Most processes within a manufacturing environment consume resources. In uzERP a Resource is generally used for Operator grades who work on producing stock items. This allows the consumption of an Operator’s time to be costed into a product using the recovery rate for the resource.