Solumina Production Control PCA for SAP

Products

Overview

The Solumina Production Control PCA (Packaged Composite Application) is targeted to industries like Aerospace, Defense, Nuclear Product, and Complex Medical Devices, where products have longer cycle times and often require engineering changes while in-process. Production/Material Control functions have to respond to every day issues on the shop floor like urgent engineering changes or part shortages.

Production Control personnel must be able to put work on hold on the shop floor and determine where engineering changes will cut in. When responding to part shortages caused by supplier delays or quality issues, personnel must expedite the acquisition of replacement parts from alternate suppliers.

The Production Control Composite Application manages actions real-time across ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) applications consolidating information and eliminating the need for the user to bounce from one application to another to accomplish the required tasks. Functions include Approval and Acquisition of Alternate Parts, Production Order Holds and Alterations for Engineering Changes.

Both SAP R/3 ERP and Solumina MES applications must be installed and implemented before installing the Solumina Product Control Composite Application. This composite application is complementary to functions in SAP and Solumina and does not replace any functionality provided by Solumina MES for the shop floor process planners, mechanics and inspectors. This composite application focuses on the needs of the Production Control personnel.

Monitoring Shop Floor Issues

Many part delays in manufacturing are identified before work orders are released to the shop floor. Nonetheless, in the manufacturing of products with long cycle times, it is common to release work orders to the shop floor with a few part shortages if we expect the parts to arrive when it is needed within the work order schedule. One of the reasons for part shortages is that some of those parts might not arrive when expected. Another reason could be that we find a quality problem with the parts issued to the work order during the manufacturing process.

In Solumina, production managers can identify parts that are causing process delays or line stops in specific work centers and work orders. The Solumina Production Control Composite Application surfaces these part shortage issues to Production Control personnel which can in turn expedite the parts, alternate parts, or authorize a work around to the problem.

Fig 1. Production Control PCA main screen with Work Order Information tab displayed

In Figure 1, the Part Shortages grid on the of the screen displays part shortages documented by production personnel which are holding up production jobs on the shop floor. The user can sort the list by work location, work department, work center, schedule priority, schedule date, or customer.

Assessing the Impact of Shop Floor Issues

The Work Order Information tab contains several sub-tabs which have real-time status and constraint information reported directly from the MES system. These tabs are used to research and assess the severity of the problem and determine the best course of action.

Production Control personnel can review outstanding and recent purchase orders, recent purchase requisitions, and drill down on recent vendor history to determine the magnitude of the problem and the ability of the vendor to turn around the order as promised.

In Figure 2, the Part Information tab is displayed which contains several sub-tabs with purchasing and inventory information for the part causing delays on the shop floor.

Fig 2. Production Control PCA main screen with Part Information tab displayed

Taking Action to Resolve Shop Floor Issues

After assessing the urgency of the part shortage, Production Control can try to work around the problem by splitting the work order quantity or changing the standard work sequence. If these work-around strategies do not address the issue, Production Control can try to secure a replacement part by using alternate vendors or alternate parts to solve the problem.

If the part shortage applies to a subset of the work order quantity, Production Control can split the work order quantity to allow a subset of the production units to continue and isolate the units that will remain on hold waiting for parts.

Another work-around strategy is to authorize a change to the work sequence if possible. Production Control coordinates with the Process Planning department the change to the work sequence to work around the temporary part shortage issue and in parallel continues to expedite the part with the vendor.

In some cases it will be necessary to pursue an alternate source for the part or we might authorize the use of an alternate part. Requirements for the specific work order can be modified and Purchase requisitions can be initiated from the Production Control PCA.

Providing Update to the Shop Floor

Production Control personnel provide updates and resolution status back to the shop floor directly from the Production Control PCA application. The feedback will be viewed real-time by shop floor personnel in the Solumina MES application.

SAP, SAP NetWeaver, R/3, mySAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG.

iBASEt and Solumina and their respective logos are registered trademarks of iBASEt.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

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