Production Manager

Question 1

PM helps control:

Giving real-time info on:

Answer 1

inventory accuracy, unplanned expenses, cash flow

raw material, cost, production status

Question 2

Features:

Answer 2

• Commit raw materials before production begins
• Link production orders to sales orders
• Customize production builds on the fly
• Create subassemblies for a single product
• Track work in progress (WIP)
• Manage production phases with one click
• Automatically generate requisitions from inventory shortages and create purchase orders
• Reorder reports based on committed items and date requirements
• Print production schedules
• Print production orders
• Automatically create production orders from shortages
• Automatically create production orders from sales orders

Question 3

How are production orders created?

What links are made?

What links are made when a PO is issued?

Answer 3

Requisitioning from the sales order or inventory list, or adding manually, or from the production order in the case of sub-assemblies.

If they are sent in from sales, they are linked to the sales order by populating the Sales Order number in the component line and the production order number in the Sales detail line.

Information that carries over:
Customer number and name
Purchase order number
Sales order line required date
Sales order line reference number
Sales order number

Once a requisition has been processed, the PO number is populated on the production order line, and the production order is put on the PO number line. This link is only done by a requisition and cannot be added later.

Question 4

Company settings:

Answer 4

Enable scrap and yield - If this is turned on there will be fields in the template to enter an estimated scrap and yield. These are then brought into production orders, but the user can edit them for better accuracy. Can be turned off.

Enable revision level - If this is turned on, when a template is edited and saved the user is prompted to enter a revision number. The revision is posted to production history for later reporting.

Default Category - Each line of a template can have a category that is used for later reporting. If the category is always the same, a default entry can be set here so that it is automatically added to each line of the template.

Question 5

User Settings:

Answer 5

• View Production Notes
• Edit Production Notes
• Export Production Notes
• Change Component Cost
• This should normally be left off so that the cost is not edited from what comes from inventory.
• Update Templates
• Create Production Orders
• Access Production Orders
• Added to the user’s main menu.
• Edit Production Orders
• Delete Production Orders
• Export Production Orders
• Build Production Orders
• Adds the produced item to inventory and relieves raw material.
• Allow Increment Phases – increment to the next phase
• Allow Phase Change – edit the phase.
• Create Template Orders – Able to create templates.
• Default Phase – What phase a production order is set to when adding a new order.
• Automatically Commit – When setting a production order to ‘Pending’ or ‘In Progress’ it commits the complete order instead of the user committing line by line.

Question 6

Templates (AKA) Include:

How are they applied?

Answer 6

(Bill of Material/Recipes)
Components, quantities, instructions

Create a Production Order from Templates
Switch from default when editing a Production Order

Question 7

Production Order Fields:

Answer 7

• Required Date - The date required for this production order to be completed. This date is either added manually or will come from the required date of a sales order requisition. The required date can be used to determine when the order should be completed, the date the material should be in the warehouse or to run reports for re-ordering components.
• Status: Open/Pending/In-Progress
• Inventory (Components): Top = Item, below are its components. Status level dots show items, squares show sub-assemblies. > opens the sub-assembly and consumers components of it, not the finished item
• Toggle off will re-apply the sub-assembly template and remove any changes to it.
• Notes:
  Line Notes - These notes are entered on each line of the production order and are used mostly to give instructions to the user on how to assemble the product. These notes are brought from the template and can be pushed back to it.
  Instructions - These notes are brought from the template and can be pushed back to it.
  Manufacturing Notes - These notes are for the overall production order but specifically for this particular build. These notes do not come from the template.

Phases - A series of phases can be created that the production order can be stepped through. The user clicks the ‘Next Phase’ button and the order is pushed into the next phase and the phase date is updated. The end date/time are then populated on the previous phase so the user can see how long the order spent in each phase.

Question 8

What are the status’ and how do they work?

Answer 8

Open - Means that the components are not committed in inventory
Pending - The components are committed but production has not started
In-Progress - The components are committed and production has begun

• If the item is serialized or lot controlled it will prompt for the serial/lot number to be used, but the user can opt out of selecting them at this time. The quantity in inventory is still committed and the user will still have to select the serial/lot numbers before being able to build the production order.
• Committing the order also sets the top item and sub-assemblies as being ‘On Order’. It does the same as a purchase order so that when viewing the item they can tell how many are in production.

Question 9

Templates:

Answer 9

Push to Template - If a production order is edited, the template does not get updated unless the user clicks “Push to Template”. This then updates the template that is currently on the production order, and leaves other templates alone.

Pull From Template - If a user pulls from template it brings any changes that were done to the template, except if the lines on the production order were edited, or added to the production order after the initial creation of the order.

Switch Templates - On a production order, the user can switch from the default template to another template. When doing so it will pull the components from this new template, except for lines that have been edited or added to the production order.

If an item has an alternate set for it in inventory the “Switch To Alternate” button will light up and they can click it to change the line to the substitute but must then re-enter the quantity for that component.

Question 10

Status Level Indicators:

Answer 10

Green - There are enough components for this production order and all other committed orders as well.

Yellow - Indicates that we can build all of this production order, but may not be able to build other production orders that use this component.

Orange - Indicates that we can build all of this production order, but may not be able to build other production orders that use this component. However, the components have already been ordered

Red - There are not enough components to build this order

Question 11

What does Building a Production Order do?

Answer 11

• Removes components from stock by posting an inventory receipt
• Relieves lot or serial numbers from components
• Adds lot or serial numbers to finished goods
• Adds finished goods to stock by posting an inventory receipt
• Posts a journal entry to move from the components GL asset account if different from the finished goods account
• Posts the production order to production history
• Prints a production completion report

The user can select the date to post the entry to and can select if they are building the complete quantity or partial. If the user does not wish to complete the remaining quantity they can delete the order and the remaining components will be uncommitted in inventory.