What is complex and simple manufacturing?

Overview

It is not a well-kept secret that using simple manufacturing software can streamline any manufacturing business. There are all sorts of manufactured products out there, from running shoes, to Barbie dolls, to space shuttles. However, manufacturing and the related processes are usually separated into two different categories: simple, or batch manufacturing and complex, or discrete manufacturing.

Imagine a company that makes firewood. This is a simple, repetitive manufacturing process that begins with raw material (a tree) on one end and results in a finished product (cut firewood). Only one flat bill-of-materials is required for the entire project, and there are no sub-assemblies that need to take place to complete the product. This is an example of simple manufacturing.

What about a wooden desk? There are multiple steps required to transform a piece of wood into a desk. There is sanding and cutting, attaching hardware to each piece, painting, finishing, polishing, and final assembly that needs to take place. However, these are all repeatable processes, with the same stages and raw materials required. This would still be an example of simple or batch manufacturing, where multiple pieces of wood are made into desks.

Now let’s take a look at a sailboat. Many boats are custom-made to order, with various idiosyncrasies that go into the making of each unit. For example, several parts and processes go into making a sailboat, from the actual sails to the boat’s body to the cockpit. Each part requires multiple steps to create, various raw materials, distinct worker skillsets, etc. This is an example of complex discrete manufacturing. This type of manufacturing is often used for concrete products with long cycles, multiple levels or subassemblies, and multi-level material bills.

Both simple and complex manufacturing companies can benefit from technology that allows for capabilities like a streamlined operations process, real-time inventory and part tracking, production scheduling, quality control, and more. SAP Business One is a fully loaded Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that allows simple and complex manufacturers to streamline operations and keep up with ambitious product cycles.

How does an ERP system help manufacturing companies?

As technology continues to advance, manufacturers are under pressure to evolve and leverage cutting-edge technology in their operations. Faster business cycles and shrinking product life cycles result in increasingly rapid production and shipping schedules. Furthermore, the rise in consumer expectations and an ever-expanding pool of competition thanks to digital and global selling models makes quality control and on-time delivery more critical than ever. More and more manufacturing companies turn toward operations management software to give them greater control and visibility of their operations to focus on innovation and speed to market.

A robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system provides simple manufacturing software to complete a picture of your entire business, allowing for greater control of your manufacturing operations. SAP Business One helps both simple and complex manufacturers manage their bills of materials (BOMs), production schedules, and quality control.

Bills of Materials (BOMs)

SAP Business One allows for simpler, automated management of your Bills of Materials (BOMs). When you add a bill of materials to purchase, production, or sales orders, pricing and quantities are automatically recorded for both the product and its components. SAP Business One supports standard, special, and disassembly production orders. BOMs can easily be entered into production orders to automatically record item availability, warehouse location, and issue method.

Multi-level BOM management is also streamlined in the system. When a high-level BOM is adjusted, the lower level BOMs are automatically updated in the design, so your team does not need to spend time manually updating a BOM for each stage of the production cycle.

Material Requirements Planning (MRP)

Material requirements planning (MRP) allows simple manufacturers to plan material requirements for simple and complex, multilevel production processes. Using the MRP wizard in SAP Business One, you can create scenarios specifying time horizon, items, and data sources. Once defined, these scenarios can be saved and reused for subsequent planning phases, so you don’t need to repeat the process. The MRP functionality will automatically generate production and purchase orders required to manufacture a final product in the quantities and time specified by various costing methods, such as FIFO, moving average, and standard. Inventory valuation and last purchase price per item are also automatically updated after each transaction.

Production Planning

SAP Business One allows you to plan production to meet demand, ensure on-time delivery, and minimize costs. Resource planning scenarios and demand forecasts within the system help you determine how much of each product is required based on current orders and historical trends. You can view and update schedules based on the work center across all your warehouse locations. Once one piece of a production schedule changes, the schedule’s remaining processes are updated automatically, so you always have accurate information on projects once they’re completed.

The shop floor catcher allows employees at each work center to indicate when they start and stop a job so that you can calculate the exact cost of labor, machinery, and materials used for a particular work order. This also enables greater collaboration and accountability while providing a more straightforward way to manage quality checks.

Read about Scheduling Production Software

Available and Capable to Promise

With simple manufacturing software, the scheduling portal within SAP Business One allows you to see precisely what you have available-to-promise. You have a complete picture of what inventory you already have in stock, what is in the works (and when you can expect it to be readily available), and what you already have committed to ordering. This gives you a complete snapshot of your inventory so you can avoid out-of-stock situations and deliver all your customer orders on time.

Capable-to-promise functionality allows you to see what you can have completed by a particular date, based on either when you will begin production or when you will order the materials required for a specific project. This type of forecast enables you to plan production schedules to meet the demand forecast and avoid excess inventory costs.

Quality Control

SAP Business One includes an industry-leading quality control module. With total visibility into the production process from start to finish, you can make sure that your product meets even the most stringent regulatory requirements. With the ability to plan and perform quality checks throughout the entire production process, you can rest assured you are putting the best product possible out to market. Furthermore, with this simple manufacturing software, you have the flexibility to stop or continue production throughout the quality control process, so you don’t need to slow down production to manage quality.

Conclusion

SAP Business One is the simple manufacturing software to fully integrate all your manufacturing operations under one umbrella, so you have access to everything you need to plan production and maintain high-quality standards, regardless of how many steps or customizations are required! Take your growing business to the next level with cutting-edge technology.