Hi folks,

Wondering what methodologies some of you use for tracking equipment files in a manufacturing setting that's somewhere between custom-work and "every job is just a little bit different"-type work.

A little background - the company that I work for has primarily been in the chemical manufacturing business. Some of our products are used more crudely than others - some are mix-and-pour in the crudest sense, and other products require a little more precision in their use. For the latter, we are starting to build dispensing equipment. The problem is this...

When you're dealing with a chemical product - let's use toothpaste as a hypothetical - for the most part, you're looking for consistency every time. This is the kind of work we're used to - you have a known formulation, you follow the same procedures, and you *want* things to turn out the same way every time - that is, after all, what the customer expects. Now, we're delving into this equipment stuff - where, say, one customer may want features A, B, and C - while the next customer wants A, C, and D. In addition, it may not always be as simple as "building off of a base model" - I am not sure how "custom" we are willing to go, and the venture is new enough that the company may not be sure of that themselves.

For those of you who work with products like these - how do you handle work order management? I'm talking about situations where there may not be a standard bill of materials...where the processes are fairly consistent, but with inevitable tweaks here and there in each and every case.

Customer interest is building, and I don't want to be caught in a situation where sales is promising things that we're not ready to make. The development is there, yes - but the production systems are not.

Any insights?
Cheers,
-R.

Rachel,
It sounds like the process is the same but the materials change. If that's correct, I would think your basic work instruction would suffice (with minimal tweaking) if there were a "set-up" spec for each job defining all the material, mix, whatever differences.

We have many different mixes of plastisol for different jobs but our mixing and processing functions are relatively the same. Each "job" has its own specific ID and when we get an order, it specifies all the requirements for that job. We have many different varieties of similar products but they all follow the same process flow. We don't find it cumbersome at all.

Dave

When you're dealing with a chemical product - let's use toothpaste as a hypothetical - for the most part, you're looking for consistency every time. This is the kind of work we're used to - you have a known formulation, you follow the same procedures, and you *want* things to turn out the same way every time - that is, after all, what the customer expects. Now, we're delving into this equipment stuff - where, say, one customer may want features A, B, and C - while the next customer wants A, C, and D. In addition, it may not always be as simple as "building off of a base model" - I am not sure how "custom" we are willing to go, and the venture is new enough that the company may not be sure of that themselves.

For those of you who work with products like these - how do you handle work order management? I'm talking about situations where there may not be a standard bill of materials...where the processes are fairly consistent, but with inevitable tweaks here and there in each and every case.

Processes are fairly consistent, so you've generic documentation/standards for this, right? That will allow for those inevitable tweaks via tables/notes when required.

We make steel. It's pretty much a healthy combination of science and art, with a liberal dosage of fairy dust. :) We have fabrication standards for all of our grades...recipes if you will. These fab standards detail the acceptable ranges for chemistry on all elements added to the steel, include the scrap mix ratio (i.e., how much of each type of scrap metal to use). It works for us.

When it comes to orders, the schedule will indicate the grade (so that we will use the appropriate fabrication standard) and any additional Cusomter notes from the order (e.g., to be on the high end of an element's range).

It's a lot of work upfront to develop the fabrication standards, but relatively easy to maintain. When massive changes are required to the fab standards, again the work load goes up, but these are documents that help out everyone to ensure that what we melt and cast meets the Customer's requirements.

Customer interest is building, and I don't want to be caught in a situation where sales is promising things that we're not ready to make. The development is there, yes - but the production systems are not.

For any grades or products requested that are not within our established product range, a Product Study is done to verify whether we can make the product and whether it is practical for us to do (i.e., $$$)