Production Floorstock - Let's Brainstorm!

For day-to-day production, you're going to need to document that you've: * Pulled an item from floor stock * Returned an item back to floor stock ... not everyone is capable of doing that process.

Currently, you have an established in-bound material/ receiving/ inspection/ MRB/ stocking process. How will that process change with your proposed floor stock process?

Who is going to give-up the shop floor space for this boondoggle?

How are you going to keep people like rework-types and return repair-types from drawing down your stock surprises?

Who's going to do cycle counting?

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There may be a better way, but this is how we do it:

We have one SMT line and ALL SMT parts are kept in the SMT area. There is no kitting of SMT parts...only through hole, etc. For each SMT part in our ERP system, we set for backflush. That means that backflushed parts do not show up on the pick list. Our SMT area is simply an extension of the stockroom.

When we run a job we simply pull the reels nearby and load the machine and then return the reels after the job is run. The ERP system automatically deducts the quantity of each part based on the BOM after the SMT operation is completed.

Our Quad machine has intelligent feeders that keep track of the inventory consumed. When we unload a reel, a label is printed showing the remaining parts on the reel. When a reel is loaded, we scan the label barcode and that puts the quantity into the feeder's memory.

One nice thing about this system is that the reels you use for most jobs can be kept on the machine between jobs (less setup). Technicians who come for a few parts for repair sign them out on a log sheet and then we manually deduct them at some future time.

A couple things we must watch out for is that the BOMs MUST be correct and that we should factor some spoilage for mispicks, etc. A 1% (or whatever) spoilage factor can be added in the ERP system. Yes, it may get a tad out of sync, but most of the parts are cheap and any loss is certainly far cheaper than kitting. You may only want to backflush the 5 cent parts and under which should still greatly reduce your kitting if the accountants get picky.

Does anyone have any ideas on how our system can be improved?

Dean M

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Dave hit the hottest issues.

But, I would emphasize the cycle counting!!

Your inventory will quickly lose control of scrap percentages. That is, you may set your system to, say, 5% scrap....but, your operator and/or machine may lose 10% on a particular build. That difference in scrap/loss will catch up to you eventually.

Could go to a min/max system for floor stock, to minimize your cycle counting. We got that system going, with EDI-MRP with one of our vendors.

As with all material replenishment systems, it's only as good as the data it gets, and the maintenance it receives daily.

cheers ..rob

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oh, yeah...

there's a potential issue with AVL utilization per job; depending on how your system is set up now to handle this.

If, say, one internal part number contains multiple vendor part numbers, and your MRP system defines which vendor to use for which job...it'll be one more step for your operators to verify on the floor.

just needs some process tweaking and training to ensure it's not a problem...

cheers ..rob

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