Hi guys!
We have been trying to implement BC for over an year and when I say many, I mean MANY of us are getting frustrated with it. We just can't figure out how to use BC efficiently. Handling our products in the system sometimes takes longer than the manufacturing process itself. I will list you a few things about our business and then... any kind of help is appreciated.
We are a small company (under 30 employees) and used to have simple processes. It was clear we needed better control and visibility into our material requirements. Now we are dealing with items and sales orders and production orders and routings and production BOM:s and so on. Now our product information management is basically 404 - not found. We know we need to reorganize it, but we don't know how.
Our products fall into different categories:
80% One-off-products
- Completely unique each time
- They will never be produced again with the same structure
- Technical design department always involved
- Challenge: if we create a new item for each, we end up with thousands of items per year and we've already lost control
10% Custom-to-order-products
- Always has the same base structure, only small details change between orders (paint, color, surface finish, etc.), while the cost stays stable
- Technical design is only needed for the first order
- Challenge: How to manage order specific information such paint, color?
8% Dimension based products
- The customer orders it by the piece, but always with given dimensions (e.g. 2.312 m wide × 1.884 m high)
- The material consumption is proportional to the area: for every 1 m² of finished product, we always need 1 m² of X and 1 m² of Y.
- These are usually also one-off-products, but with a standard structure picked from our catalogue
- Challenge: We don't want to create a new item for every possible dimension, we need to capture dimensions on the sales line and we would like to avoid manual calculations, because the value of each job can be small (sometimes like few dollars)
1% Standard products
- Identical structure every time
- Designed once, then reused without further design effort
- If we only had these type of products, the system would be easy and fun
1% Warehouse products
- Simple stocked items taken directly from inventory
I wish I found someone who have had similar situation and managed to solve it so I could rest in peace finally. I've tried to understand assembly orders, but our process involves routing, welding, painting, surface treatment and final assembly. It would be great if we could somehow inspect and manage the capacity of those departments.
