ERP for repetitive series manufacturing
Production plan, net requirements calculation, changeovers and OEE declared at the workstation: the ERP for workshops that assemble product variants in series, on one site or on several.
Manufacturing
- Production plan and load by workstation
- Net requirements calculation
- Changeovers and setup times
The series holds until the first missing component
Assembling in repetitive series is less a manufacturing problem than a sequencing one. The plan matches load against capacity workstation by workstation, and a single bottleneck sets the throughput of the whole: whatever is released beyond its capacity does not come out any faster, it piles up in front of it. Many groups add a further layer, when the site that assembles is not the one that makes the sub-assemblies and the plan has to be read twice, locally and then consolidated.
The requirements calculation then takes that plan down through the bill of materials: gross requirement, deduction of stock on hand and of orders already released, net requirement, offset by the procurement lead time. The mechanics are simple; the assumptions less so. The firm order book covers only part of the horizon, and beyond it the plan rests on forecasts that every revision moves. A safety stock set once and for all and a supplier lead time never reassessed are enough to send the order out too late, or to tie up stock that no longer turns.
The workshop discovers the gap at assembly. A missing connector, fastener or instruction sheet holds up a product whose every other part is there, and the workstation stops with it. Resequencing at that stage costs more than the component: the load of the downstream workstations has to be undone, components already kitted taken back out and orders already promised pushed back.
Variants, changeovers and the truth about unit cost
One base product comes in options: supply voltage, finish, destination market, accessories shipped with it. The bill of materials becomes multi-level, and the definition held by the design office drifts little by little from what the workshop actually builds. A substitution agreed one evening to keep the line running does not always find its way back into the revision.
Moving from one variant to the next is a changeover. The SMED approach consists in separating what requires the workstation to stop from what could be prepared while it runs. That sorting assumes setup times measured per workstation and part number, without which the effort goes to the most visible changeovers rather than to the most frequent. The same requirement applies to OEE: availability, performance and quality mean nothing if they are reconstructed at month end from work orders gathered after the fact.
AVIA ERP holds the multi-level, version-controlled bill of materials, variants included, and keeps every works order on the definition in force when it was released. Setup times, stoppages, scrap and rework are declared at the workstation on a tablet or by barcode scan, then charged to the order that produced them. Scrap leaves the flow having consumed material, rework returns to it having consumed time: telling the two apart is what makes the planned and the actual cost of a run comparable.
What a repetitive series workshop expects from its ERP
- Production plan and load by workstationLoad and capacity matched by workstation and by work centre, from S&OP to the master production schedule and on to scheduling. The bottleneck is visible before release, and a change of sequence is replayed on the schedule instead of starting again from the plan.
- Net requirements calculationThe plan taken down through the multi-level bill of materials: gross requirement, deduction of stock and of open orders, net requirement offset by the procurement lead time. Purchase and works suggestions take account of the firm order book as well as of forecasts.
- Changeovers and setup timesSetup times are a scheduling constraint in the same way as the machine, the tooling or the operator's qualification. Measured at the workstation, they show where sorting internal from external operations is worth the effort.
- OEE declared on the shop floorAvailability, performance and quality computed from the stoppages, rates and scrap entered at the workstation, with the associated stoppage reasons. The figure can be discussed in a meeting because it comes from the line.
- Version-controlled bill of materials and variantsBase product and options within one multi-level structure, with revisions and their associated routings. The revision applied remains the one in force at release, so a change of definition does not contaminate a run already under way.
- Scrap, rework and unit costScrap and rework declared separately, tied to the order concerned and to the non-conformance reason. Planned and actual compare run by run, time variances and material overconsumption included.
- Multiple sites and consolidationRequirements, stock and work in progress stay readable site by site and consolidate at group level, including when one site makes the sub-assemblies another site assembles.
The direct benefits for your industrial company
A plan the workshop can hold to
Load is matched against the capacity of the bottleneck workstation before release. The date given to the customer comes out of the schedule and not out of an average cycle time.
Fewer assemblies stopped for one component
Net requirement rests on real stock and real orders. The shortage appears in procurement rather than at the assembly station.
Changeovers decided on known times
Setup becomes an input to the schedule. Grouping two variants or separating them stops being a matter of team habit.
A unit cost that stands up to analysis
Scrap and rework are charged to the order that generated them, which avoids smoothing across a whole run a variance that arose on a single variant.
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