Internal Usage to supply production cells with parts?

We're just going up on Sage 300 to control inventory, in a manufacturing environment. We have 1 central stocking location for bulk supply inventory parts, and a factory floor in close proximity. The plan is to periodically move 2 week's worth of inventory from the 1 central stocking location, to individual, various work cells. The thought is this will keep the cells supplied with parts, so they can just use and consume as needed, without doing transactions for everything they touch. The transaction to do this "transfer" would be the Internal Usage function. We produce simple product assemblies, and do not have any BOM's built. We also do not have any manufacturing module, such as auto-simply. We also realize that this transaction will instantly 'consume' these parts (about 2 weeks worth) in 1 fell swoop, and we're OK with that, since it's only 2 week's worth of inventory, and the other 20 weeks worth of inventory is in the 1 main stocking location (warehouse). We also realize that the inventory value of all these transactions instantly goes to zero, we're also ok with that. If at any point we need to get a value of the parts in the work cells, it's no big deal - can be counted pretty quickly.

Has anyone else done this kind of routine, or, have you done anything else similar to accomplish the same goal - keep the factory moving, without being choked by lots of transactions reaching for a screw?

Thanks!

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    we do this sort of thing when we take consumables such as plastic caps or shrink wrap.   If these products are being made into your final saleable item though, I don't think this is the way you would want to do it.  I would suggest creating a sub location.  if main location is 100, then create a location called 101 or 100A or something like that.  then do an IC Transfer into that location.  Then when your goods are build, to an IC ASSEMBLY on the BOM and transfer the item back to the main location for sale.

    When you internally use something, it's meant as a consumable.  just my $0.02

  • The typical scenario I've seen with this approach is to:
    1. Transfer to the production location
    2. Do periodic counts to reduce / expense stock at the production location

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    Hi Charles - One of our Sage 300 clients is a manufacturer of mattresses and their manufacturing process is very similar to what you describe.  Their process is order driven so even though they stock each cell, the jobs that get submitted to the floor represent the next week's worth of jobs and they typically have a few weeks worth of orders in their system.

    We developed a system for them that consists of a visual order scheduler, a production planner, and a shop floor manager.

    The orders get created in Sage 300 Order Entry and immediately become visible on the scheduler.  You just drag and drop the job on the scheduled day.

    Scheduled orders automatically appear on the production planner tool and you drag and drop them into a production group - maybe based on delivery vehicle.  When you are done planning a day's worth of jobs, you press a button and planner walks through those orders, converting them to Sage shipping documents (automatically executing BOMS if required) and generating barcoded labels.  The orders automatically appear on the shop floor tool.

    The shop floor tool is designed to run on touch screen Surface Pro tablets.  The first cell sees the work that they are expected to complete.  When they are done with a line item, they apply the barcoded label and scan the barcode.  This tells the system that that stage of the workflow is complete and the line item now appears at the next cell in the workflow.  The next cell does their part and scans the barcode to move it to the next cell and so on.  A workflow can be up to 10 steps.

    The system works very well for them.  Costing is accurate because of the BOMs and inventory levels of raw material is also accurate.  Inventory automatically gets consumed when the orders are converted to shipping documents.

    The tools are drag and drop and quite easy to use.  If you are interested, we can connect offline to discuss further.

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    Without over complicating the issue, what you describe will work.  Sounds like you lump everything into COGS and your procedure will do that.  My 0.02c worth.