Shopfloor Manufacturing

PRONTO Xi Manufacturing is easy to use and implement and offers a high degree of flexibility to your operations. It supports a wide range of industries and effectively manages most manufacturing processes including high-volume production, lean manufacturing environments and mass customisation. Manufacturing processes vary greatly between industries, and often within the same company, as manufactured products pass through various stages, requiring different planning and control methods.

PRONTO Xi Manufacturing integrates seamlessly with other PRONTO Xi modules, providing a comprehensive yet focused view of your business.

Flexibility is paramount in manufacturing operations management. PRONTO Xi offers a comprehensive range of tools supporting modern lean manufacturing methods.

These include traditional shopfloor, control, planning and work order processes as well as order-less production. Manufacturing is offered as two modules: Shopfloor Manufacturing and Manufacturing Planning.

The Shopfloor main module allows for Bill of Material (BOM) maintenance with various methods of processing and recording production, as it moves through the factory.

The Planning module is an extension of the main module and provides you with tools such as Master Production Scheduling (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP).

In addition, the powerful Manufacturing Scheduler application may be added to offer total visibility and management of your factory’s loading.

PRONTO Xi Manufacturing attributes include:

• Product data management – Item control, Bill of Material (BOM), routing, work centres, product configurator, kitting;
• Shopfloor control – Work orders, production feedback, alternative routings, subcontract operations, costing and General Ledger posting;
• Manufacturing processes – Make to Stock, Repetitive, Batch, Make to Order, Assemble to Order, Configure to Order, Engineer to Order;
• Planning – Materials, capacity, exception reporting, subcontracting, sales and operations planning, Planning BOMs, Super Bills, rough cut capacity planning;
• Quality control – Traceability by lot, batch and serial number;
• Costing– Standard, average, actual, First-In-First-Out (FIFO) and more.

Manufacturing Workflow

PRONTO Xi Shopfloor Manufacturing and Manufacturing Planning adapt easily to different production environments. Make to Stock operations are supported by MPS, MRP and CRP, as well as Sales and Operations Planning using Planning BOMs and Super Bills.

Shopfloor production can be controlled using work orders, or can be order-less, supporting lean manufacturing processes. Raw materials usage is controlled through traditional stock issue functions, automatic backflushing of materials, or any combination of these.

Production results can be captured in real-time using bar code readers, Radio Frequency (RF) units, or via traditional desktops. External time and attendance modules can be integrated into PRONTO Xi Manufacturing. Multi-level batch, lot and serial number tracking are fully supported throughout the entire system.

Make to Stock, Make to Order, Assemble to Order, and Mass Customisation operations are supported through a range of flexible functionality. PRONTO Xi provides sales order kitting and manufacturing of kit items, as well as a powerful configurator module. Kitting typically involves a question and answer scenario, where a customer can select options from a predefined list of items. These items can then be shipped as a kit, or perhaps after some assembly, as a finished item.

The PRONTO Xi Product Configurator offers the ability to set all product variants in a single generic item, using user-definable parameters. Permanent records can be created if necessary.

Product Data Management

Item Master and Associated Records

A manufacturing system is controlled by the characteristics of the individual item master and associated records. Items can be set as ‘normal’ saleable inventory items, manufactured products, raw material (not for resale), kit, labour, special or indent items.

Planning parameters determine the replenishment algorithms for the MRP or reorder system, and minimum inventory settings provide separate replenishment levels by warehouse. Product lifecycle management is performed through a number of condition flags and time periods.

Item control includes lot, batch and serial tracking data. Extra detail records store other special information such as export details, chemical or HazChem classification and production drawings (references).

Bill of Material

A Bill of Material (BOM) is a list of all items (sub-assemblies, components and raw materials) required to produce the parent assembly, displaying quantities of each of these items.

PRONTO Xi supports multi-level bill structures up to a maximum of 50 levels. Product lifecycles can be managed through a combination of BOM effectively date, version control, Engineering Change Orders (ECO) or user-controlled flags. PRONTO Xi will handle designators, split-fill, calculated component quantities and other industry-specific solutions.

Routing, Operations and Work Centres

Routing, operations and work centres describe the sequential steps, operations, equipment and the respective setup and run times required to make a particular product. This information, together with the associated labour and overhead costs, are used by the planning and costing systems. PRONTO Xi supports:

• Discrete manufacturing;
• Rate-based production;
• Parallel routing;
• Multiple cavity tooling;
• Alternative routing streams;
• Subcontracting operations.

If there is no production capacity reporting required, in basic manufacturing environments labour and overhead costs can be recorded via labour and special items, rather than using the PRONTO Xi routing.

Product Configuration

PRONTO Xi product configuration and kitting features offer extraordinarily rich functionality to support Make to Order, Assemble to Order and Engineer to Order industries. Straightforward features and option scenarios are easily implemented through a kit BOM.

Alternatively, the Product Configurator provides the ability to create unlimited BOM variations based on a generic BOM (or master recipe). A generic BOM is defined as a Master Bill that is designed for every possible permutation of an item, with built-in constraints for product and manufacturing processes. It is based on variable elements of the product, for example, height, width and colour. This applies to both components and routings.

In a quotation scenario you have the option of building the configured item up-front, or, you can choose to create the configured item upon acceptance of the quotation by your customer. This reduces the administrative requirement of managing the lifecycle of many discrete inventory items, should your customer reject the quotation.

The Product Configurator provides the tools to calculate materials usage and production times including setup, costs and prices. Relationships between various parameters are typically linear and arithmetic. Therefore, PRONTO Xi also uses lookup tables to provide links for any unique parameter relationships that may exist.

Manufacturing Operations

PRONTO Xi Shopfloor Manufacturing

Work orders – PRONTO Xi Shopfloor Manufacturing manages the execution phase of the manufacturing process. Work orders are typically used to manage the planning, execution, raw materials consumption and feedback of production results.

In a lean manufacturing environment, PRONTO Xi offers order-less and paperless recording of production, using backflush methods for raw materials consumption and progressive crediting of labour and overhead ‘hours earned’.

Special work order types and processes are available for disassembly-type industries and other special operations such as rework, repack and others.

Production feedback – Production results can be recorded using standard production feedback tools, or one of a large number of industry-specific, production entry methods.

Alternative routing – This allows selection of a specific route, on the day of actual production, from a range of predefined routings. Lot, batch and serial tracking is supported for finished goods as well as components or raw materials.

Subcontracting – PRONTO Xi Shopfloor Manufacturing includes subcontracting functionality. Subcontract purchase orders can be raised at various times throughout the lifecycle of the work order. The completion of a subcontractor process can be controlled by either standard purchasing goods receipt or work order production entry.

The integrity of stock control of goods produced and payment for subcontracting services is fully preserved without any compromise to inventory integrity such as double-handling and creation of dummy items.

Manufacturing Processes

Make to Stock, Repetitive, Batch Production – PRONTO Xi Manufacturing allows flexible and efficient management of this vital hub of supply chain management in the modern manufacturing organisation:

• Materials planning via forecasting;
• Sales orders and stock replenishment policies;
• Automatic creation of work orders and purchase orders;
• Initiating subcontract operations;
• Creating vendor schedules;
• Capacity planning of actual production;
• Release of Shopfloor documentation;
• Reporting of production results.

PRONTO Xi supports discrete manufacturing, rate-based production, parallel routing, multiple cavity tooling, alternative routing streams and subcontract operations. Make to Order, Assemble to Order, Configure to Order and Engineer to Order manufacturing are also standard features.