What is a Mixed Mode Manufacturer and Why Does it Matter?

In my last post I talked about Engineer to Order manufacturing and I referred to the 8 Modes of Manufacturing that I use to define and categorize how a manufacturing implementation of Business Central should be done.

In my article there the 8th mode is actually called Mixed Mode, which basically means that more than one type of manufacturing is being conducted by the same company. This is is  the hardest type of manufacturing to implement.  I want to talk about that a little bit, including some ways to identify if you are a mixed mode manufacturer (or your customer is) and some of the difficulty in implementing this kind of business.

Manufacturers Are Rarely Unique

Almost every manufacturing company I meet and talk to thinks they are very unique and nobody else is like them. When you get into the details of how they make their products they are almost always right. When it comes to how the manufacturing ERP system should be implemented their quite wrong.

How you make a product (which machines it runs on, and what materials or processes it follows) are totally different than implementing an ERP like Business Central.  Within Business Central we have places to define and document the unique needs of each customer. Bills of material and routings, machine centers, work centers, outsourced processes ... all of these are flexible and can be defined differently for every customer. But, the manufacturing modules are are still just deployed as different combinations of the same Lego blocks.

For instance, I outline the most common features needed by a Make to Stock manufacturer in a blog I wrote. If I were to meet 10 make to stock manufacturers, these needs would be (with some minor variation) the same.

The exact list of parts they buy, their part numbers, their machine center information ... that'll all be different, but the implementation of the ERP is the same.

Mixed Mode is actually Unique

When you get into Mixed Mode manufacturing it gets a lot harder to say that they are all the same.  

Mixed mode manufacturing is when a manufacturing company has more than one mode of manufacturing.  Some common examples are a Job Shop and a Make to Order manufacturer. Another is an Engineer to Order and a Configure to Order.

Something that can be really confusing is that the end product itself can't always be used to determine this.  It's not always the products that define modes of manufacturing. It is the production control methods and the way the value stream flows that really determine it.

Lean Value Stream Mapping and Production Control

If we take a look at a typical example of a value stream map (specifics removed to protect the innocent) then the production control process and the steps needed to manufacture the product sort of map to the Mode of Manufacturing.  Although the specific flow of machines and process steps might be different, in general any two random products you pick should have similar value stream maps if there is only one mode of manufacturing.

What happens with multiple modes of manufacturing is that the value stream maps of the processes are very different.  You might have huge lead times for certain steps (such as Engineer to Order where there is often 8-20 weeks of engineering backlog in the value stream map). You might have supplier products needing to arrive mid stream (such as a configure to order where special order parts are regularly part of the VSM but are not stocked before the process starts). You may have many more steps in manufacturing for some products, and many less for others.

It can be really hard to spot these differences.  It can be really hard if the customer doesn't recognize them.

The Customer Isn't Always Right

When you are implementing Business Central manufacturing, you need to understand if you are Mixed Mode or if you can fit more neatly into one (and only one) of the modes.  This can be really hard when your business (or your customer) are convinced they are not mixed mode.

It's not so much they don't think they are mixed mode by the way.

It's that people in the business don't know what the modes are.

Take a good look at the processes and ask yourself things like:

• Do any products flow through really different processes than others? 
• Do they go through departments (other than production equipment) differently?
• Are the orders managed differently?
• Are there different challenges in different product categories that are dramatically different?

Just one last comment. Process manufacturing (aka batch manufacturing) stands out very differently from the other modes, so they are pretty easy to spot. This is one case where the products are different.  The same can be said for machine design and building. If your customer builds entirely unique equipment and takes 6 months to complete one unit. they're probably ETO.

Keep your Costs and Frustrations Down

A few years ago I wrote an article on the biggest mistakes made in Business Central implementations. Among those was misinformation regarding best practices. This can be caused by two things.

• The Business Central trainers don't know the industry very well, and they gave bad advice on what to do in some situations.
• The customer misinformed the Business Central trainers and as such they provided the right advice for the wrong situation.

When you are a mixed mode manufacturer one of the most important things to understand is that you have two (or more) different flows of product information through your ERP system.  You need to therefore implement more than one process.  This can seem really counter intuitive to many customers.  It would seem that having "one common way" to do things would make everything easier. That is not going to work if you are mixed mode.

Let me give you a manufacturing example.

Say half your product needs to go on CNC lathes and the other half CNC mills.  You would not make things easier by having "one common way" and getting rid of all the lathes so that everything goes through mills. That would be a disaster.

Really understanding if you are a Mixed Mode manufacturer is critical to making sure you do not have a lot of frustrations (and costs). Trying to find one way to process all orders through your system is like trying to have only one kind of CNC machine in your factory.

Conclusion

If you are implementing Business Central for your manufacturing company, and you are having problems and can't seem to figure out how to solve them, it might be that you are a mixed mode trying to implement as if you are a single mode of manufacturing.

Look for these "tells" to see if it might be the case. Remember - this has to do with the order management and production control process, not the manufacturing steps.

• You've tried to create a single (simplified) flow for all your orders, but some just can't seem to be made to fit.
• When you change your process to accommodate one product category, it causes problems in a different product category.
• Reporting and analytics for two different product categories seem to conflict.
• Setting up to get the data for one category seems to make it harder to get the data for the other.
• Staff frequently say "this works when I want to do X, but when I do Y I have to use excel sheets or paper"

If you recognize and begin to define different ways to do things, maybe even using different software modules, things will start to fall into place.