Optimize production and manufacturing workflow to track every component of every job and its cost.
Unlike most ERP’s for medium-sized enterprises, Abel Production Workflow Management delivers inbuilt scheduling and can flexibly incorporate your own business processes into its system.
This enables you to cost-effectively track performance, give faster and more accurate quotes and better plan for future labor and capacity requirements.
Manufacturing and production processes may vary widely but all businesses share the same need to know where each process is at and whether it is making or losing them money.
Drawing on our experience from working with over 200 manufacturing and production businesses, Abel’s ERP makes tracking complex workflows simple. It includes a full suite of Production Scheduling, Capacity Planning, Bill of Materials (BOM), Manufacturing and Plant Orders, Product Costing and Stock and Inventory Management functionalities. For ease of planning, all sub-assemblies of task and supply chain management can be graphically exploded into a single view. All phases of work are captured and costed-in so you can match resource against demand and assess performance against deadlines and profitability.
Abel Production Workflow Management can give you the benefit of:
Production Workflows
Manufacturing and Production workflows vary greatly according to the industry and required outcome. Items may be:
- Manufactured to order or stock
- Assembled from inventory stocks, purchased components, or sub assemblies
- Modified or repaired
- Produced from raw materials received
Each separate process must be costed correctly to enable the manufacturing or production departments to assess their performance whether employing profit or breakeven accounting. To satisfy the costing process, raw materials, inventory stock, related expenses, labor and machine can be controlled through various requisition and capture processes, part and final completion processes, back flushed, direct cost purchase, or any combination of these
Work In Progress is captured in real time and is supported by additional collection means such as RF units’ barcodes, time clocks, touch screens etc. Part and final completions transfer out of WIP in real time, either to an associated production process, to inventory stock, or directly to the customer dispatch process where the transferred time and materials or budgeted cost will be used for cost of goods sold. Variances are generally retained within the production department but can be consolidated if required.
Bill Of Materials (BOM)
Multi layered BOMs provide the standard and suggested recipes to produce and manage complex manufacturing and production orders. In addition to raw materials, inventory stocks and related expenses, the BOM structure also contains the sub processing requirements (sub manufacture, sub assemblies, sub jobbing, sub production and external processes) as well as the work group and work centre routings and the operational requirements.
Operation requirements can be linked to work instructions and drawings. After the production order has entered the planning state, the contents of the exploded BOM can be further fine tuned to satisfy your specific usages, routings, inventory purchases etc.
Routings via work centers can include setup, runtime and cleanup times for both labor and machine, with setup times being modified according to plant production sequencing. For the smaller manufacturer, work centres are not mandatory and plant scheduling can be performed at the work group level, via labor and/or machine entries in the BOM.
Designer Bill Of Materials
Many organisations require a one off manufacturing process that progresses through quotations, orders then into the manufacturing production process. Multi Level Designer BOM’s are provided to satisfy this requirement.
Designer BOM’s can be created against any production line on a customer quote, customer order or at any of the planning or production order stages. Designer BOMs can be manually loaded, created from skeleton BOMs or externally loaded from other designer software tools such as CAD.
Full explosion of Designer BOM’s can occur at initial load time, or when the customer’s order enters the planning or production order stage. Designer BOMs incorporate the same full functionality as the standard Bill of Materials.
Production Costing
An essential part of any manufacturing or production process is the maintenance of accurate costings so as to provide the production department and accounting staff with performance cost comparisons both during and at completion of each part of the process.
Firstly a budgeted or estimated cost of manufacture or production needs to be established for the finished goods, build or repair process. This needs to distinguish between breakeven or profit based accounting within the department or work group. Budgeted costs can be established from the bill of materials costings, specified inputs to the processes, fixed costs that can include labor only, machine only, materials only, overheads only or any combination of the above, or the actual time and materials costs. Where fixed cost is used, this is frequently the result of the sales department requesting a fixed cost quote in whole or in part from production prior to providing the customer with a price.
Having established an expected cost of production, actual costs need to be accumulated into work in progress as the manufacture or production process is progressed. Actual costs result from purchased items, stock usage, expense items, labor timecards, machine usage and sub assembly costs. Any or all of the costs, excluding sub assemblies, can be back flushed. As Abel is fully integrated, costs are instantly posted to the production order WIPs and to the General Ledger WIPs accounts in the Balance Sheet.
As orders are part or finally completed, postings are credited against the orders WIPs and to the General Leger that reflect the finished goods into stock, finished goods to be dispatched to customers, repaired items to be dispatched and invoiced and sub assemblies costed upwards to their parent order. Where possible the manufacturing and production variances are declared and posted. Variances can be lumped together or split by labor, machine, materials, overheads and sub assembly work.
Make to stock items commonly enter inventory stock at standard or budgeted costs. Make to order items are usually transferred to the customer dispatch process at budgeted cost that established the cost of goods when invoiced. Product builds and repairs frequently use time and materials and or fixed costs to establish cost of goods at invoice time. However any costing process can be used according to your accounting rules.
Various online views and reports are available for analyzing these performance results.
Production Planning
It is normal practice that an organization requires that manufacturing and production orders are progressed through a planning stage to ensure stocked materials are available and labor and machinery is not over committed. Although orders are rough cut scheduled into their correct position according to work order constraints, it is frequently necessary to ensure materials are either available in stock or going to be available before progressing an order into the plant. Abel provides extensive visibility of stocking levels showing on hand, allocated, reserved, on order and shortage quantities. This information can be viewed as first come first allocated, first reserved first allocated or current available positions. Materials coming from stock may be placed on a reserved queue during the planning stage or as the order is progressed to plant production.
It is usually during the planning stage that non stocked materials are ordered from suppliers, with expected arrival dates controlling the final scheduled position for production.
Where the plant has restricted labor or machine availability, or where a customer is desperate for a partial delivered quantity, or where the full quantity of a stocked item is insufficient for a full production run, it is possible to progress a partial quantity into production leaving the remainder in planning. Subassemblies can also be progressed separately from the parent order either in whole or in part. The same splitting processes are also available during the plant manufacturing and production phases.
It is not essential that all manufacturing and production orders are progressed through the planning stage. Where all raw materials are held in bulk silos, or where smaller build or repair jobs are needed, these can either enter the plant production stage directly, or may be entered directly into the plant and scheduled accordingly. Frequently extra one off jobs may be urgently required as a manufacturing or production extension or when plant rework is needed, a separate order can be created directly into the plant and linked back to its associated plant.
Production Scheduling
Some organizations require full Work Centre routing and scheduling, others are content with Work Group scheduling without routes, while others do not require any scheduling. In Abel the Work Group specifies the level of scheduling required. The Work Centre or Work Group dictates the basis of scheduling i.e. labor, machine or quantity using either Finite or Infinite processes.
Each Bill of Materials contains the capacity usage information to be consumed at each work centre route. Set up and clean times, fixed time per build unit and run rate per build unit are available for labor and machine. Additional scheduling information such as begins after previous start, begins after previous end, schedule for parallel completions, standing times, constrained position and downstream and upstream associations can also be specified within the BOM route.
Abel provides a unique function for organizations wishing to schedule by work group. Labor and machine times can be specified within the structure on the BOM, and when exploded will accumulate upwards to the work group and become available for scheduling. Alternatively BOM Operations or Tasks can contain the labor and machine times and are exploded and accumulated as above.
Work Centres can be specific or generic. As customer quotes and orders are created, Abel automatically calculates the earliest date to promise using the exploded Bill of Materials, constraint work centres and minimum times into accounting for this calculation.
Company and Branch calendars specify working days. Default day of the week start and end times, available labor and machine hours, maximum quantities, number of employees, default crew size and the number of machines are entered against the Work Centre and Work Group. This information may be entered as global or specified by branch. Where daily times need to be modified because of maintenance downtime, employee sickness or scheduled overtime, overrides are available for this purpose.
Abel’s unique scheduling process provides pick and drop positioning that incorporates variable setup times according to previously scheduled jobs and labor overlaps dependent on crew sizes. Unlike other ERP systems in use, Abel provides comprehensive workflow management and flexible capacity planning.