Manufacturers who are suffering at the hands of bloated inventories, missing deliveries, and angry customers don’t usually bring up planning as one of their objectives in acquiring a manufacturing system. “Who’s supposed to be steering the boat when both of us have to be down here bailing the bilge” they cry.
Assuming there is some real hope of staunching the flood and relieving at least some of your staff to do some steering of the boat, you should have a good look at the tools prospective manufacturing software like MISys offers for simple planning.
By using the word “simple” we mean planning that is not necessarily time-phased. It is a view of the world that looks straight down at the tips of your shoes, but it is a valuable view nonetheless.
The most rudimentary manufacturing software should feature some sort of shortage report which will alert you to items whose stock level is falling below a pre-determined level or “reorder point.” In the MISys Manufacturing system, this called the Buyer's Advice Report. It lists every item where the quantity on hand, plus on order, is less than the reorder report.
Running this report once a week and dropping it on the desk of the purchasing manager would be a vast improvement over what you are doing now – most likely roaming through the stockroom groping in empty cardboard boxes. But the MISys Buyer's Advice Report has some very special abilities that help you create corresponding purchase orders automatically. Be sure to ask your MISys sales agent to demonstrate this for you.
Given that you can maintain reasonably accurate inventory records and bills of material, you should be able to perform some decent production planning, too.
If you know what you have in stock today, and you know what you want to make, and you know how to make it, then your manufacturing software should be able to perform a “what-if” analysis and alert you to impending shortages. Based on the results of this what-if analysis, you could either change your production plans, or purchase any of the material you will need to complete it. The Basic Manufacturing module of MISys includes a simple yet powerful Stock Check function that allows you to perform just such an analysis.
Even the simple planning tools described here can go a long way to helping you reduce your inventory holding costs and achieve one of the major objectives for acquiring an automated manufacturing control system.
You can explore the Stock Check capabilties of MISys Manufacturing by watching the streaming videos at www.misysinc.com.
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Monday, September 19, 2011
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Sunday - September 4, 2011
One of the great things about living in a small rural community is that whenever there is a need, the populace turns out to assist. Such is the case in Woodstock (and all over Vermont for that matter) as citizens mobilize to help those who suffered the most loss during last weekend's flash floods.
Since school is scheduled to open on Tuesday, Disaster Central has been relocated from the Woodstock Elementary School to the fire department's Station #2. The continuing relief effort will be directed from there, coordinating with Woodstock Emergency Services, the Vermont National Guard, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Fresh water, food, bedding, and clothing donated by Woodstock residents is being distributed free of charge to anyone who needs it.
This is nominally a holiday weekend as the country celebrates Labor Day on Monday, September 5th. In all likelihood, you won't notice a let-up in the efforts to put the town back in shape and ready to welcome visitors for the annual folliage season.
Here is some great aerial photography of some of the flooded areas in Vermont.
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Since school is scheduled to open on Tuesday, Disaster Central has been relocated from the Woodstock Elementary School to the fire department's Station #2. The continuing relief effort will be directed from there, coordinating with Woodstock Emergency Services, the Vermont National Guard, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Fresh water, food, bedding, and clothing donated by Woodstock residents is being distributed free of charge to anyone who needs it.
This is nominally a holiday weekend as the country celebrates Labor Day on Monday, September 5th. In all likelihood, you won't notice a let-up in the efforts to put the town back in shape and ready to welcome visitors for the annual folliage season.
Here is some great aerial photography of some of the flooded areas in Vermont.
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Saturday, September 03, 2011
Saturday - September 3, 2011
On my 3 mile trip through Woodstock to the MISys offices yesterday, I started counting dump trucks -- ranging from small 7-yard models up to the big 30-yard haulers. Count: 23 trucks in just 18 minutes. Each of these is loaded with rocks and gravel being used to fill in the massive ditches that used to be roads.
Today we learned that the State of Vermont has decied to allow the removal of material from the Ottauqhechee Riverbed. What used to be a lazy stream with no more than a few inches of running water in mid-summer turned into a swift-running river 25 feet deep and 4-times wider that it had been the day before Irene struck. Now that the water has receded, the wide, shallow riverbed resembles the surface of the moon.
Topsoil on one of the few remaining cornields is being pushed back and piled up in preparation for the contruction of a rock crushing plant. In a few days, a giant machine will be delievered and set up in the old cornfield. Boulders from the riverbed will be fed into one end and crushed rock from the other end of the machine will be loaded into dump trucks and carted off to wherever a few more yards of fill are needed. Sourcing crushed rock locally will spare each truck a 30 mile round trip.
Immense progress is being made restoring Vermont's roads and bridges. Good thing, too, since the fall tourism season will soon be upon us. Now, more than ever. we need to get the word out that Vermont is open for business. Our friends and neighbors run the restaurants, hotels, country inns, B&Bs, and other tourist attractions. They are working hard, despite great personal loss, to get ready for visitors from out of state. They desparately need your business. Won't you come see for yourself that we are still one of the prettiest towns in America? See http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2011/09/02/letter-to-tourists-come-back-to-vermont/
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Today we learned that the State of Vermont has decied to allow the removal of material from the Ottauqhechee Riverbed. What used to be a lazy stream with no more than a few inches of running water in mid-summer turned into a swift-running river 25 feet deep and 4-times wider that it had been the day before Irene struck. Now that the water has receded, the wide, shallow riverbed resembles the surface of the moon.
Topsoil on one of the few remaining cornields is being pushed back and piled up in preparation for the contruction of a rock crushing plant. In a few days, a giant machine will be delievered and set up in the old cornfield. Boulders from the riverbed will be fed into one end and crushed rock from the other end of the machine will be loaded into dump trucks and carted off to wherever a few more yards of fill are needed. Sourcing crushed rock locally will spare each truck a 30 mile round trip.
Immense progress is being made restoring Vermont's roads and bridges. Good thing, too, since the fall tourism season will soon be upon us. Now, more than ever. we need to get the word out that Vermont is open for business. Our friends and neighbors run the restaurants, hotels, country inns, B&Bs, and other tourist attractions. They are working hard, despite great personal loss, to get ready for visitors from out of state. They desparately need your business. Won't you come see for yourself that we are still one of the prettiest towns in America? See http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2011/09/02/letter-to-tourists-come-back-to-vermont/
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Friday, September 02, 2011
Friday - September 2, 2011
8:00am: MISys is back up and running!
MISys now has electric service and we are back up and running! Unfortantely any emails sent to us after Monday of this week were bounced.
If you received a bounce notice (or just didn't get any response) please resend it and we'll answer it as soon as possible. All phones and email accounts are now working.
The roads will take some more work.
Thanks for all your support, prayers and best wishes as we struggled through this mess.
The MISys Guys!
5:00pm: MISys Community celebrates with town-wide potluck supper.
MISys now has electric service and we are back up and running! Unfortantely any emails sent to us after Monday of this week were bounced.
If you received a bounce notice (or just didn't get any response) please resend it and we'll answer it as soon as possible. All phones and email accounts are now working.
The roads will take some more work.
Thanks for all your support, prayers and best wishes as we struggled through this mess.
The MISys Guys!
5:00pm: MISys Community celebrates with town-wide potluck supper.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Thursday - September 1, 2011
The MISys offices in Woodstock, Vermont remain closed after severe flooding related to hurricane Irene over the weekend. The town is slowly recovering from massive washouts, the failure of the town's water system, and the public utilities. Watch this news report.
The transformer that supplies power to our building is still attached to the electric pole, but the pole is laying on the ground, half submerged in a thick layer of mud.
The town's water supply was disabled when the storm surge took out an 8" main and emptied the contents of the water tank into the Ottauquechee River. Pumping the dry tank caused further failures of other equipment which must be replaced before pumping can begin again. The water company cannot promise a date when service will be restored.
Each morning we check with the electric utility company about the chances of getting power restored so that we can bring our servers up, including our email server. Their latest advice is that we might get power back by the end of Friday.
We are able to respond to emails sent to otroad1@gmail.com. We can answer many sales and customer service-related questions, and some technical support requests sent to this address.
As soon as power is restored, we can be back in business, even without running water. Hopefully everything will be back to normal by the beginning of next week.
That said, we are mindfull of the many friends and neighbors who have lost everything in the recent storm.
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The transformer that supplies power to our building is still attached to the electric pole, but the pole is laying on the ground, half submerged in a thick layer of mud.
The town's water supply was disabled when the storm surge took out an 8" main and emptied the contents of the water tank into the Ottauquechee River. Pumping the dry tank caused further failures of other equipment which must be replaced before pumping can begin again. The water company cannot promise a date when service will be restored.
Each morning we check with the electric utility company about the chances of getting power restored so that we can bring our servers up, including our email server. Their latest advice is that we might get power back by the end of Friday.
We are able to respond to emails sent to otroad1@gmail.com. We can answer many sales and customer service-related questions, and some technical support requests sent to this address.
As soon as power is restored, we can be back in business, even without running water. Hopefully everything will be back to normal by the beginning of next week.
That said, we are mindfull of the many friends and neighbors who have lost everything in the recent storm.
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011
The Case For Multi-level BOM Revisions
Many inventory control systems list a bill of material as a key feature. If you are talking manufacturing, you will need multi-level bills of material. You can do very simple assembly work with single-level bills of material, but real manufacturing requires a multi-level bill of material to describe the entire product structure.
The MISys Manufacturing System sports a 16-level BOM capability. And you can have up to 4 billion items at any level. This allows for truly massive product structures.
In the MISys system, a Bill of Material is much more than a pretty picture of what you build. MISys uses the BOM for a number of functions: from backflushing assembly operations, to mutli-level cost roll-ups, where used analyses, available to promise projections, and much more.
From time to time manufacturing companies change the way they build things. This change may be inspired by a better design coming out of Engineering, a clever cost reduction, or a substitution necessitated by a vendor part shortage. Unless you can convince me that you have been building the same assembly the same way since just after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and you promise you will never ever change it in the future, then make bill of material revision control a requirement of your dream manufacturing system. Changes always – and should – happen. Be prepared for them.
MISys gives you the optional ability to create as many revisions of a Bill of Material as you wish. Each Revision Number can be a letter, digit, or a combination of the two. In my previous experience designing and building super-mini computers, we used digits to track changes to the BOM as the design progressed through engineering. When the design was released to manufacturing, it acquired a letter revision, starting with A. So you instantly knew that any product bearing the Revision A was unchanged since its original release to manufacturing. I still like that methodology.
Check out the MISys Manufacturing System's support for multi-level Bills of Material and full revision control by going to www.misysinc.com.
The MISys Manufacturing System sports a 16-level BOM capability. And you can have up to 4 billion items at any level. This allows for truly massive product structures.
In the MISys system, a Bill of Material is much more than a pretty picture of what you build. MISys uses the BOM for a number of functions: from backflushing assembly operations, to mutli-level cost roll-ups, where used analyses, available to promise projections, and much more.
From time to time manufacturing companies change the way they build things. This change may be inspired by a better design coming out of Engineering, a clever cost reduction, or a substitution necessitated by a vendor part shortage. Unless you can convince me that you have been building the same assembly the same way since just after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and you promise you will never ever change it in the future, then make bill of material revision control a requirement of your dream manufacturing system. Changes always – and should – happen. Be prepared for them.
MISys gives you the optional ability to create as many revisions of a Bill of Material as you wish. Each Revision Number can be a letter, digit, or a combination of the two. In my previous experience designing and building super-mini computers, we used digits to track changes to the BOM as the design progressed through engineering. When the design was released to manufacturing, it acquired a letter revision, starting with A. So you instantly knew that any product bearing the Revision A was unchanged since its original release to manufacturing. I still like that methodology.
Check out the MISys Manufacturing System's support for multi-level Bills of Material and full revision control by going to www.misysinc.com.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Getting Started With MISys: Here's What's Next
Anyone using the MISys Manufacturing System for the first time would have every reason to ask "Now what do I do?"
That's why the new version of the system includes a comprehensive Getting Started Guide designed to lead you by the hand as you configure and set up the system.
You can explore the Getting Started Guide even without installing a copy of MISys Manufacturing by watching this instructional video.
We hope you'll discover that installing and setting up MISys Manufacturing is really quite easy if you use the tools we've provided. Request a trial copy of MISys Manufacturing by going to www.misysinc.com/.
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That's why the new version of the system includes a comprehensive Getting Started Guide designed to lead you by the hand as you configure and set up the system.
You can explore the Getting Started Guide even without installing a copy of MISys Manufacturing by watching this instructional video.
We hope you'll discover that installing and setting up MISys Manufacturing is really quite easy if you use the tools we've provided. Request a trial copy of MISys Manufacturing by going to www.misysinc.com/.
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