Manufacturing Support Systems

1.1.2 Manufacturing Support Systems

To operate the production facilities efficiently, a company must organize itself to design

the processes and equipment, plan and control the production orders, and satisfy product quality requirements. These functions are accomplished by manufacturing support

systems—people and procedures by which a company manages its production operations.

Most of these support systems do not directly contact the product, but they plan and

control its progress through the factory.

Manufacturing support involves a sequence of activities, as depicted in Figure 1.3.

The activities consist of four functions that include much information flow and data

processing: (1) business functions, (2) product design, (3) manufacturing planning, and

(4) manufacturing control.

Business Functions. The business functions are the principal means by which the

company communicates with the customer. They are, therefore, the beginning and the

end of the information-processing sequence. Included in this category are sales and marketing, sales forecasting, order entry, and customer billing.

The order to produce a product typically originates from the customer and proceeds

into the company through the sales department of the firm. The production order will be in

one of the following forms: (1) an order to manufacture an item to the customer’s specifications, (2) a customer order to buy one or more of the manufacturer’s proprietary products,

or (3) an internal company order based on a forecast of future demand for a proprietary

product.

Product Design. If the product is manufactured to customer design, the design

has been provided by the customer, and the manufacturer’s product design department is

not involved. If the product is to be produced to customer specifications, the manufacturer’s product design department may be contracted to do the design work for the product

as well as to manufacture it.

If the product is proprietary, the manufacturing firm is responsible for its development and design. The sequence of events that initiates a new product design often originates in the sales department; the direction of information flow is indicated in Figure 1.3.

The departments of the firm that are organized to accomplish product design might include

research and development, design engineering, and perhaps a prototype shop.Manufacturing Planning. The information and documentation that constitute the

product design flows into the manufacturing planning function. The information-processing

activities in manufacturing planning include process planning, master scheduling, material

requirements planning, and capacity planning.

Process planning consists of determining the sequence of individual processing and

assembly operations needed to produce the part. The manufacturing engineering department is responsible for planning the processes and related technical details such as tooling. Manufacturing planning includes logistics issues, commonly known as production

planning. The authorization to produce the product must be translated into the master

production schedule, which is a listing of the products to be made, the dates on which

they are to be delivered, and the quantities of each. Based on this master schedule, the

individual components and subassemblies that make up each product must be scheduled.

Raw materials must be purchased or requisitioned from storage, parts must be ordered

from suppliers, and all of these items must be planned so they are available when needed.

The computations for this planning are made by material requirements planning. In

addition, the master schedule must not list more quantities of products than the factory

is capable of producing each month with its given number of machines and manpower.

Capacity planning is concerned with determining the human and equipment resources

of the firm and checking to make sure that the production plan is feasible.

Manufacturing Control. Manufacturing control is concerned with managing and

controlling the physical operations in the factory to implement the manufacturing plans.

The flow of information is from planning to control as indicated in Figure 1.3. Information

also flows back and forth between manufacturing control and the factory operations.

Included in this function are shop floor control, inventory control, and quality control.

Shop floor control deals with the problem of monitoring the progress of the product as it is being processed, assembled, moved, and inspected in the factory. Shop floor

control is concerned with inventory in the sense that the materials being processed in

the factory are work-in-process inventory. Thus, shop floor control and inventory control

overlap to some extent. Inventory control attempts to strike a proper balance between

the risk of too little inventory (with possible stock-outs of materials) and the carrying cost

of too much inventory. It deals with such issues as deciding the right quantities of materials to order and when to reorder a given item when stock is low. The function of quality

control is to ensure that the quality of the product and its components meet the standards

specified by the product designer. To accomplish its mission, quality control depends on

inspection activities performed in the factory at various times during the manufacture of

the product. Also, raw materials and component parts from outside sources are sometimes inspected when they are received, and final inspection and testing of the finished

product is performed to ensure functional quality and appearance. Quality control also

includes data collection and problem-solving approaches to address process problems related to quality, such as statistical process control (SPC) and Six Sigma.