Manufacturing Systems: Data Ownership

Great Manufacturing software is built upon a well-engineered data framework. For example, MISys Manufacturing software has a range of master tables that include: Items, Bills of Material, Suppliers, Locations, and Workcenters.

As with any other system, Manufacturing System success results from deploying good strategy and managing it well. A company with solid manufacturing processes that do not support the manufacturing data, can end up with inaccurate data that prevents many benefits a manufacturing system can provide. For example, planners can have difficulty running Material Resource Planning (MRP), which could be caused by bad data not owned by them. Unfortunately, too often, many of those Planners resort to spreadsheets that are disconnected from the manufacturing database.

Let’s have a look at the Item Master table. Problems with any of the following can prevent useful results coming out of MRP:

·      Purchased item Units of Measure not set correctly (Stock UOM and Purchase UOM).

·      Item stock setting has a missing or outdated Shortage Basis or Reorder Quantity 

·      Finished Good items are not linked correctly to the current Sales Item in the accounting system.

Most manufacturing systems have utilities that assist in maintaining clean data. When key individuals are responsible for owning data and become engaged in maintaining data quality the results can be significant, including the ability to run MRP with the benefits that come along with it.

Any questions? Contact us.

Matt.