Manufacturing Improvement – MISys and Kanban’s

In many manufacturing environments, the replenishment of Bulk items to a Work Center is triggered by a Kanban signal that goes to the stock room.  This is common with visual replenishment methods such as ‘Two-Bin’ or ‘Kanban Cards’.

In MISys, when Bulk Items are released from the stock room to the Work Center, they should be allocated to general WIP. If the allocation is not done, the completion of a Manufacturing Order (MO) will consume the bulk qtys from stock, because there was no general WIP available to consume from. The result is an apparent reduction from  bulk units in the stock room that does not correctly reflect consumption from the Kanban floor stock.

In MISys (below) when replenishing Work Centers from a Kanban signal, click ‘Allocate’ to transfer the bulk unit(s) to the Work Center Kanban. In this example, 1 spool of wire (1,000feet), is allocated to general WIP, (there is no association to a production order yet).

 
 

Raw Materials in a Manufacturing Order will appear on an MO Pick List (Bulk Items do not) and get allocated with either a ‘Stock -> WIP transaction’, or by starting the associated Operation using Shop Operations. This ‘issues’  those WIP amounts to the Manufacturing order, (but not the Bulk items).

Any Bulk Items remain in general WIP with no association to Manufacturing order WIP until the ‘completion’ of the Manufacturing order.

 
 

Completing the build, either by completing the Manufacturing Order, or by using Shop Operations, then consumes the Bulk Item from general WIP into the Manufacturing Order, along with any raw materials that had been allocated to the MO at the start.

Any questions? Contact us!

Matt.