Orders and work orders in the APS system

Basic concepts of orders and work orders:

An order is a demand placed by a customer on us. Usually the order only includes the finished product for sale.

Work orders are called production orders in some ERPs and are internal production task orders issued to complete production.

Work orders are issued based on orders, but there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence.

For example: the customer places a long-term order with a large quantity, but the work order cannot be too large and needs to be split according to the production cycle. A work order can be opened for weekly output.

Or multiple small work orders can be merged into one work order to simplify production management.

Problems and difficulties:

1 Delivery time issues:

Because of the problems of splitting and merging, there is no one-to-one correspondence between orders and work orders. It is also generally not possible to maintain matching tables in ERP. In this way, when the order changes, the work order cannot follow the changes. For example, the customer changes the delivery date of the order, or changes the quantity of the order, but the work order cannot be changed immediately.

The start date of the work order needs to be determined based on the order delivery date. In some ERPs, because no corresponding relationship is established, the demand date of the work order is often inaccurate, and the delivery date needs to be manually checked one by one when preparing the production plan.

2 Inventory increase:

Quantity mismatches lead to production often being advanced. As shown below:

Assume that the customer splits the original demand into two deliveries. Since the work order has been issued and cannot be split, the company will produce the demand on October 30 in advance. Advance production will lead to an increase in product inventory and material inventory. The inventory will occupy too much funds and reduce the turnover rate.

APS solution:

In PlanMateAPS, work orders are scheduled. Before scheduling, the order work is first preprocessed. include:

• Establish matching relationships between orders and work orders
• Recalculate the demand date of the work order based on the matching relationship

After the above matching calculation, we can get

The demand date of the work order

• Suggestions for re-opening work orders: If the work orders are insufficient, APS can give suggestions for re-opening work orders.
• Work order modification suggestions: If the number of work orders does not match the demand, APS will give modification suggestions to increase or decrease the number of work orders.
• Work order splitting suggestions: If the matching demand time span of a work order is too large, APS will give splitting suggestions. Work order splitting can avoid products being produced too far in advance and reduce inventory.
• Work order merging suggestions: APS gives merging suggestions for work orders of the same product that are close in time. Merging work orders into production can simplify production management.

The suggestions given by APS need to be actually implemented in ERP. After the execution is completed, the data can be downloaded again, a matching run is performed, and then automatic scheduling is performed.