Thoughts on Pragmatic Inventory Control procedures

[Marc]

From: "Robert Coles"
Newsgroups: misc.industry.quality
Subject: inventory control
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 13:50:23 -0500
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises

Before implementing a super dupe inventory control software, I wish to goback to basics tagging, counting, signing, training... Has anyone a source for pragmatic inventory control procedures ?

Thanks

---------------snippo---------------

From: fidel12
Newsgroups: misc.industry.quality
Subject: Re: inventory control
Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 00:27:29 GMT

I applaud your common sense! I came from a very disciplined manufacturing enviroment that had the disciplines you mentioned(traceability, correct bill of materials, lot identification, etc) and when we went to an ERP system- it wasn't a big challange. Last year we implemented an ERP system(Oracle) in the financial company I work for that has a manufacturing operations( but didn't know it) and due to lack of manufacturing disciplines- really struggeled. Main reason was the people didn't understand the system is only as good as the data and procedures! We have overcome that. Some key learnings I can remember from both experiences are:

Inventory control systems are dependent on data- make sure your bill of materials is correct. Make sure your usage is correct or your forecast will be off.

Make sure people understand the accoutability of when material gets issued to them. Make sure they understand material movement. One funny, but real thing that happened to us was a department would finish their part of the process and move it to a shelf in the other area(like they use to) They didn't make their move transaction in the system, so the system didn't account for it.

Not sure if this helps- but thought I would share my experiences.

[Andy Bassett]

Just two brief comments.

If you do want to computerise your procurement remember three things.

.Bill of Materials
.Bill of Materials
.Bill of Materials.

Imagine your product has 400 parts, and the BoM is a super 95% accurate, that means more that 20 parts are missing, and 20 subsequent firemen action, And guess who will get the blame, the computer system.

Second point, are you sure you need a computer system, the Japanese laugh in their Saki not only at our attempts to improve quality by proceduralising/standardising everything, i also suspect that they have a bit of a giggle at our attempts to obtain better inventory control with computers.

The best systems around are Japanese ie Kanban, which is not a computer system. Incidentally the biggest user of Kanban is....McDonalds.

What is your production environment; is it mass flow production with accurate engineering data. If yes look at computers (MRP11 is arguably the direction you will go in), if no go back to basics.

Tell us a little more of your environment.



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Andy B