But what does “manufacturing support” mean? It’s handling the overhead in gathering the various components (the so called Bill of Materials) which are necessary to put together a product from their various locations or suppliers where they are stored or purchased from. It then involves tracking their construction into a single product and consequently handling the resulting inventory needs – updating relevant stock levels and costs.
It is easy to imagine the logistics complexity involved for any given company with an established business cycle. Receiving an order (or multiple orders) for a certain volume of products which need to be manufactured is something that could easily go wrong, over schedule or out of budget.
This does not need to be the case though – the adopted business software is there to make such tasks much easier and minimize their risk by following best practices.
Megaventory, in particular, simplifies things considerably while still allowing for the job to get done efficiently. First, just click on the Work Order module:
This asks you to answer three very simple questions – what you need to make, where you need it made and how many of it you need manufactured.
All questions are very simple and straightforward and made even simpler by the predefined answers available to help you out – e.g. the product to be made.
So once that’s done, you’re taken in the main manufacturing control interface. Lots of information’s there but the most important bit is the Bill of Materials in the bottom – the components you will be needing to fulfill this work order. These have to have been filled in ahead of time – but extra components can be added on the fly too.
Once you’re confident you have all that’s necessary, just click Allocate Components.
Now is the time to input the number of finished goods which will be manufactured/produced by the Work Order. Their corresponding components will be checked to ensure you do not order more than you can make and if it can be done you will be allowed to proceed. This will set the Work Order at the stage of “In Process”.
When the goods are ready you can receive the entire batch or as they become ready you can start receiving them partially – until they have all been completed.
Finally, the work order closes and the process wraps up.
At any point of course you can go back to correct mistakes or change the progress accordingly.
It is also important to note that this process and work flow is both adequately structured and flexible enough to be able to cover a wide range of scenarios. In practical terms this means that we have had clients who have used the Work module from setting up booth stands with various electronic components to packets of multi-flavoured soup.