- Simplifies Work Center and Routing Destination
- Provides Advanced Routing Functionality
- Improves Quality Assurance
- Minimizes Data Maintenance Effort
This module defines the standards concerning where and how the products and components defined in the Engineering Control module are to be produced. The routing standards defined in this module provide the basic foundation upon which a variety of future system functions are later built, including lead time calculations, shop floor control, capacity planning, labor feedback and cost accounting, to name but a few.
Since the sphere of influence of the Manufacturing Engineering module is so encompassing, it is essential to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the routings and standards that are produced within its realm. Towards that end, DMACS provides a vast assortment of tools, be they on-line inquiry, update screens or batch exception and standard routing reports.
Work Center Maintenance
The process of defining routings and standards begins at the work center level. The standards that are defined for each work center affect several different areas within the manufacturing control system. This influence is never more apparent than in the capacity planning process.
The standards that are entered for each work center provide capacity planners with many of the tools necessary to anticipate and solve capacity problems while there is still time to do so, instead of reacting to the problems once they have already occurred.
The standards defined for each work center also affect the cost accounting process. Fixed and variable burden percents and direct and setup labor rate codes can be used as the defaults for operations that are costed at each work center.
Overhead can be calculated based on traditional labor feedback times. However, for machine intensive environments, DMACS allows overhead to be optionally calculated based on machine time.
Routing Maintenance
The ability to define where and how each product is to be produced is achieved through the maintenance of master, unique, helper and alternate operations. Each individual operation that is required to build an item will have a significant impact on the costing and resource planning of that item. Taken together in sequence, these operations constitute the item’s standard routing.
DMACS allows you to maintain multiple routings for each item. One routing must be defined as the standard routing for each item for planning purposes; all other routings for an item are considered as alternates.
For each operation defined within a routing, DMACS provides the use of dual operation effectivity dates. This gives you the ability to phase operations in and out of a routing, thereby providing an historical record of past, present and future standard routing requirements.
Unique Operations
As their name implies, unique operations are unique to the items in whose routing they are found. When an operation exists that is used by many items, the operation can be entered over and over again as a unique operation. However, to alleviate the data entry and maintenance function in this situation, DMACS provides the use of master operations.
Master Operations
Master operations provide a method of reducing the data entry function required by standard routing maintenance. Instead of entering the same parameters over and over for an operation that is common to many items, you can define the standards for that operation just once.
Then, through the use of a simple on-line transaction, you can link it to the standard routing of each item that is affected.
Once a master operation has been tied to a routing, any subsequent changes that are made to the standards of that operation will be reflected in each item linked to the routing.
As standard operation description records are maintained to describe unique operations, so too can master description records be maintained for master operations. Those master descriptions records will, in turn, follow the operation into each routing in which it is linked. Once a master operation is joined to a routing, separate standard description records can be created from that operation and item descriptions that describe unique instructions that may apply only for that item. Therefore, a master operation that is tied to a specific item can have both master and standard operation descriptions.
The ability to track and record an employee who has worked on a piecework operation indicates whether the master operation is a piecework operation and in turn interacts with the Payroll module to calculate an employees labor time.
Helper Operations
Helper Operations provide additional labor help for workers that are involved in standard operations. Since its basic function is to provide additional manpower for an operation (at different labor rates), the helper operation is included in the item’s labor cost, but it does not increase the item’s lead time.
Alternate Operations
Alternate Operations can be established to offload the work requirements of adjoining standard operations. If loading problems exist at an operation, management may decide to re-route an item to an operation that has been designated as an alternate for that standard operation. When this situation occurs, the alternate operation will increase the item’s labor cost, but not its accumulated lead time.
As the primary components of an item’s lead time calculation, the setup hours, machine hours, delay hours and move hours are all automatically accumulated by the system from each operation within the item’s routing.
However, if overlapping operations exist for an item, you can override the system maintained hours by entering your own calculated values for each of these fields. In doing so, the overlap hours will be used in lieu of the system maintained fields during the lead time calculation for that item. Of course, the fixed lead time field for an item must be zero (0) before system can utilize these override values.
Available within the standard routing maintenance process is the ability to maintain an almost endless array of description records for each operation. These descriptions are the basic instructions for each operation, and can be viewed next to their respective operations on selected routing inquiry screens and batch reports.
Bill of Material Interface
DMACS provides the ability to link Bill of Material components directly to the operations in which they are used. This, in turn, expedites material movement on the shop floor as component material can be issued directly to the operations where they are required. This feature also facilitates daily EPA emissions forecast reporting within the DMACS Emissions Forecasting module.