production scheduling using microsoft dynamics ax

Production Scheduling Using Microsoft Dynamics AX

Planning and Implementing the Scheduling Engine

Julien-Robert Lecadou | [email protected] September 2014

1

Cover: Tisserand Wolof | Wolof weaver from Senegal

2

Table of Contents

I. Part I: Concept and Fit gap analysis ...................................................................................................... 6

A. Key term definition in Production Scheduling Module ..................................................................... 6

2. The Work Center ........................................................................................................................... 6

3. Center categories .......................................................................................................................... 6

4. The Route ...................................................................................................................................... 6

5. Jobs ............................................................................................................................................... 6

6. Operation ...................................................................................................................................... 7

7. About Job Scheduling .................................................................................................................... 7

B. The plastics manufacturing process .................................................................................................. 8

1. Extrusion of the plastic bag ........................................................................................................... 8

2. Printing on the plastic film ............................................................................................................ 8

3. Conversion .................................................................................................................................... 9

C. The gap analysis between the production routing in AX and the plastic manufacturing process ... 9

D. What Microsoft Dynamics AX is missing? ....................................................................................... 10

E. The Gap between the production scheduling literature and the actual requirements in the

planning and scheduling of the job shop in the plastic bag manufacturing’s environment .................. 11

F. Fitting the gap ................................................................................................................................. 12

G. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 13

II. Part II: Blown Film Manufacturing Process ......................................................................................... 14

A. Questionnaire ................................................................................................................................. 14

1. Ledger account ............................................................................................................................ 14

2. Extruder capacity ........................................................................................................................ 14

3. Setup time on an extruder .......................................................................................................... 14

4. Preferred Material ...................................................................................................................... 14

5. Downstream Equipment ............................................................................................................. 15

6. Width and Gauge ........................................................................................................................ 15

7. Number of web on production line ............................................................................................ 15

8. Setup time by Material ............................................................................................................... 15

9. Setup time by color ..................................................................................................................... 15

10. Term and Definition ................................................................................................................ 15

3

B. Understand the Blown Plastic Manufacturing process ................................................................... 15

1. Plastic Bags properties ................................................................................................................ 15

2. Blown Film Extrusion Description ............................................................................................... 16

3. Extruder blower properties......................................................................................................... 17

4. Various parameters used in film blowing process ...................................................................... 17

5. Plastic Film extrusion downstream equipment properties ........................................................ 18

6. Production Line example ............................................................................................................ 19

7. Process Summary ........................................................................................................................ 20

III. Part III: Manufacturing Planning and Control System .................................................................... 21

A. Strategic Business Plan.................................................................................................................... 23

B. Production Plan ............................................................................................................................... 23

C. Master Production Scheduling ........................................................................................................ 24

1. Customer Order Process ............................................................................................................. 25

2. Inventory Replenishment ............................................................................................................ 26

D. Rough-cut Capacity Planning .......................................................................................................... 29

E. Material Requirement Planning ...................................................................................................... 29

1. Bill of Material ............................................................................................................................. 30

2. Scrap Factor ................................................................................................................................ 31

3. Material Requirement Calculation Process ................................................................................ 31

F. Capacity Requirement Planning ...................................................................................................... 33

G. Production Activity Control and Purchasing ................................................................................... 34

H. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 35

IV. Part IV: Solution Design Document ................................................................................................. 36

A. Master Production Schedules ......................................................................................................... 36

1. Make-to-stock vs Make-to-Order ............................................................................................... 36

1. Create Production from Sales Order ........................................................................................... 37

2. Replenishment Profile ................................................................................................................. 39

B. Material Requirement ..................................................................................................................... 47

1. BOM Explosion ............................................................................................................................ 47

2. Material Stockout List form ........................................................................................................ 48

C. Production Activity Control ............................................................................................................. 49

1. The Scheduling Engine ................................................................................................................ 49

4

2. Production Scheduling ................................................................................................................ 50

3. Kanban Board .............................................................................................................................. 54

4. Gantt Chart.................................................................................................................................. 55

V. Part V Operation Phase ....................................................................................................................... 59

A. Master Production Schedules ......................................................................................................... 59

1. Create Production From Sales Order .......................................................................................... 59

2. Replenishment Form ................................................................................................................... 61

B. Material Requirement ..................................................................................................................... 69

C. Production Activity Control ............................................................................................................. 69

1. Production Scheduling ................................................................................................................ 69

2. Kanban Board .............................................................................................................................. 73

3. Gantt chart .................................................................................................................................. 75

4. ATP form ..................................................................................................................................... 80

5. Production Input Journal ............................................................................................................ 82

6. Route Journal .............................................................................................................................. 82

7. Job Journal .................................................................................................................................. 82

D. Purchasing ....................................................................................................................................... 83

E. Reporting Production Process Control ............................................................................................ 83

1. Yearly Production line utilization (YPLU) .................................................................................... 83

2. Monthly Scrap report .................................................................................................................. 84

3. Scrap Production process control ............................................................................................... 85

4. Scrap/Production ratio process control ...................................................................................... 85

5

Production scheduling Using Microsoft

Dynamics AX 2009

How to implement a production scheduling engine using Microsoft Dynamics AX

2009?

The standard Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009’s production scheduling engine considers the

following:

A Route is a set of multiple operations sequentially executed.

The link between these operations can be soft or hard.

Each operation uses a specific work center

You can have several route versions to manufacture an item.

And more

In our production environment, a Production Line is a combination of two types of work

centers that are a machine (an extruder) and downstream equipment (tools).We’re

currently using a manual production scheduling system because there are some

differences between the production module in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and our

current manual system. The current production routes registered in the system (in

Dynamics AX 2009) are just enumeration of operations that in reality are done once at

the time of the production.

This is meanly due to the understanding of the standard requirement of the production

routing at the time of the implementation. The result of this mistake was a pure and

simple abandon of the production scheduling sub module of Microsoft Dynamics AX

2009. Mainly because it will be too hard to maintain several thousand of routes.

Thus, the management decided to rely on its own experience.

The attempt of this paper is to show how we have tackled this complex issue of

production scheduling and the lessons that we have learnt.

6

I. Part I: Concept and Fit gap analysis

A. Key term definition in Production Scheduling Module

2. The Work Center

Work centers are the resources that are used to complete the production processes.

They can be machines, tools, people, or sub suppliers that contribute to the production

of an item. A work center consists of one or more people and/or machines with identical

capabilities that are considered as one unit for managing the planning of capacity

requirements and detailed scheduling. After a work center is created, you can assign it to

specific productions.

3. Center categories

The Category 1: is composed of extruder and its identification number is the production

line number.

The Category 2: is composed of downstream equipment’s used to create the shape of

the plastics bags, e.g. The star seal system or the winder.

The Category 3: is composed of downstream equipment used for the bag’s aesthetic and

special features e.g. the air hole machines and the printing machine.

4. The Route

The route is a detailed set of instructions that describes how to create a particular item. A

route includes operations to be performed, the scheduling sequence, machines and work

centers involved, and hours required for setup and run times. A route can also include

information about tooling, operator skill level, inspection needs, testing requirements,

and so on.

5. Jobs

Jobs are assigned to work centers during the job scheduling process. Job scheduling is

the detailed planning of capacity, and separates each operation into its individual tasks

or jobs. In the production scheduling module, the job is the ultimate task we considered.

A Job can be started, interrupted, stopped and ended. If a production order is not

reported as finished. The planner can create a new job that the operator will perform to

render a production order.

7

We have considered 2 types of Jobs that are: the setup and the process job.

6. Operation

An operation is a specific task rendered in the manufacturing process. An operation is

carried out at a work center.

Thus a route is a set of multiple operations each on a specific work center at a scheduled

time. For the scope of this project, there is only one (1) operation by production order.

7. About Job Scheduling

A Job scheduling is a detailed scheduling. It breaks each operation down into its

individual tasks or jobs. These jobs are then assigned to the individual work centers.

Target Production scheduling process

After implementation of the solution, when the job scheduling is run, the system will

schedule the resources needed for the productions based on the priorities that the

users have defined in the parameters setup.

The users can control the optimal capacity of the work centers by setting up a

min/max capacity allowed.

The calculation of the capacity loads for the work centers is conducted by the system

during the scheduling process.

8

B. The plastics manufacturing process

These are the steps involved in making any plastics bag:

Fig 1: PLASTICS BAG MANUFACTURING PROCESS

i. Extruding plastic film

ii. Printing of the plastic films

iii. Bag making or “converting”

The intention of this paper is to show the operations and resources used during the

production process and how they are scheduled. So we are not going into the details of

each operation.

1. Extrusion of the plastic bag

During the manufacturing process, you will always “extrude” the plastic film. Thus, this

operation is necessary and always happened. The extruder is a machine and its

identification number defines the production line number.

2. Printing on the plastic film

You don’t always need to have to press a print on the plastic film that is coming out of

the extruder. This operation will be skipped when a print is not requested by the

customer.

Extruding the plastic

film

Printing on film

Making the bags or

converting

9

The printing machine is a downstream equipment. It is a moveable equipment that can

be used at will.

Tips: About the work center category

The printing machine is not a primary equipment. During the design phase, the

printing equipment will be used as a work center category 3.

3. Conversion

The bag making or “conversion” activities sometimes encompasses several processes

depending on the type of bags ordered by customers. This also means that you need to

have different tools based upon the type of bags ordered. And if a tool is not required

at one production line, it can be moved to another one or simply kept aside for future

usage.

C. The gap analysis between the production routing in AX and the

plastic manufacturing process

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (AX 2009), the route is a sequence of multiple operations.

For a plastic manufacturing process the route could be:

Operation 10: Extrusion and the work center: Extruder (here Ext)

Operation 20: Bag Printing and the work center: Printing machine (here Print)

Operation 30: Bag Making and the work center: Bag machine (here Sep for separator)

Fig 2: Production Route 1

This route is clear and simple but it omits several operations. Let’s keep this simple route

for now and let’s call it Route 1. The Route 1 is the route master and we can have another

version of the Route 1 where we don’t use the printing machine and we will call it Route

1.1

Route 1.1 is:

10

Operation 1: Extrusion and the work center: Extruder

Operation 2: Bag Making and the work center: Bag machine Thus, when a bag is scheduled to be manufactured, it needs a printing job, we will use Route 1 and

when it doesn’t print on the bag, we will use Route 1.1.

This simple example only works when your production process is simple. For example,

you have one type of bag and you can press a print or not.

In reality, this is not the true case because plastic bags have different colors, size, gussets

and other features such as star seal, air hole and more. The bags can be packed in rolls

or separately. Moreover the plastics bags chemical compositions are not the same. A

customer can order 20% of calcium (CaCO3) bag whereas another will order one with

12% of this calcium bag. Some plastic bags can have drawstrings whereas others don’t

need one.

In this type of production environment, it becomes clear that Route 1 and Route 1.1 will

almost never be used. Thus, the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 scheduling engine will

become unusable if a customization is not made to standard scheduling engine.

D. What Microsoft Dynamics AX is missing?

Here are some details that Microsoft Dynamics AX is missing when it comes to job

shop scheduling in a plastic manufacturing environment:

While a route is able to assign a specific operation to a work center, it is

not possible to dynamically assign an operation to a work center that is

moveable and used when needed.

1. To put it simply, it is not possible to use Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 in

a heuristics job shop scheduling.

There are usually several types of extruders at a production plant that

can produce the same group of bags (e.g. REPRO LINEAR LOW CLEAR)

but the downstream equipment (work center type 2 or type 3) available

at one production line would determine which bags can be produced

and which ones can’t be at a given moment.

One will argue that we should use the work center group feature to resolve this issue. The

problem is that grouping extruders and downstream equipment are not possible because

these equipment are moveable, thus the work center groups’ implementation would be

problematic. Moreover, the downstream production unit is different from the extruder

production units. The first is in Case or Rolls (CS/RL) whereas the latter is in pounds (lbs.).

In general, the production scheduling engine uses the data from the

Master Planning, Production, Inventory modules. The jobs are

scheduled according to a certain direction. The jobs can be scheduled

forward or backward. But the job scheduling does not take into account

priorities (e.g. customer’s priorities).

11

The production scheduling engine of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 does

not have an expert system that could learn from the inputs from the

domain experts (e.g. the planners or the operation manager).

Finally, according to the production line configuration, the setup time

between one work order and another will be different.

Illustration

Scenario

Prod Line 1 (Ext A) Bag ={A,B,C} 800 lbs./ h

Prod Line 2 (Ext B) Bag={A,B, C} 500 lbs./h

Tool A Bag={A,B} Setup ext. A= 40 min ; Ext B= 50

Tool B Bag={A,B,C} Setup ext. A= 120 min ; Ext B= 60

Color a= black , b=clear, c=white

Table 1: Tools scheduling

WC= Work Center, Prod Line= Production Line; Ext= Extruder;

Job 1 = bag A = 2000 lbs.

Job2 = bag B= 5000lbs

Job 3 = bag C= 3000 lbs.

If Job1 is running on the Prod Line 1 with the Ext A and Tool A, it will require a new setup

for tool B on Prod line 1, if you want to run Job 3 on Prod Line 1 after Job1.

But if Job 1 is running on Prod Line 2, you can run Job 3 after Job 1. But, by avoiding the

long setup time, that will be required for Tool B on Prod Line 1, you will run into other

problems such as the creation of scrap because Bag A is Black whereas Bag C is white

and you will be using a slower machine.

This simple scenario shows that a rules engine (or an expert system) is necessary for the

production scheduling module on AX 2009.

E. The Gap between the production scheduling literature and the

actual requirements in the planning and scheduling of the job shop in the

plastic bag manufacturing’s environment

One of the most recurring problems when it comes to job shop scheduling is the

tardiness of operations scheduled. For example, a job scheduled for a given time could

be delayed because of multiple reasons such as:

The Setup of the downstream equipment could be longer than

expected

Some tools are not available because used by another machine.

A Work center breakdown or unexpected maintenance and jobs

scheduled on that line will be delayed.

Unexpected scrap during the precedent jobs.

12

Material not available

The operation research literature is filled with theories that try to tackle the issues

encountered during the job shop planning and scheduling. The job shops and the shifting

Bottleneck heuristic theories are our favorite theories.

While the shifting bottleneck heuristic theory somehow could help optimizing the job

shop scheduling, there are several constraints that hold us back.

Note: Heuristic is not by essence about optimization. People choose the heuristic job

shop scheduling because they cannot optimize their planning. In that case, the heuristic

planning could be considered as the new optimum.

The shifting bottleneck heuristic assumes that a job will go to one or more machines

before the completion of the production. Based on the setup time and processing time

of each job on a designated work center, it is possible to schedule a job shop to

minimize the makespan.

The issues here are:

There is no makespan because it is a continuous production.

The setup of the downstream equipment (ultimately the setup time) is

not done for one production orders but for multiple items that fit the

requirement of the current production line’s configuration.

As it was true for the route in standard Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009,

the theory only assumes a fixed route for every item. And the

reservation of the work center is done according to the route (master).

The issue here is that the production line is configurable and more than

one production line configuration can manufacture the same bag.

Finally, according to the production line configuration, the setup time

between one work order and another will be different.

F. Fitting the gap

The analysis of the production scheduling in the plastics manufacturing plant and the job

shop scheduling engine in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, brought us to the conclusion

that the following features need to be added to the standard system.

The work center proprieties should be enhanced. We should add the

following attribute: Min / Max width, min production starting cost. We

should also link the machine center type to the preferred downstream

equipment.

The work center type machine (extruders) should also have restricted

and preferred materials.

13

There will be 2 types of route. One route considered the master route

will be used to list the different operations needed to manufacture an

item and a floating route version that will use the scheduling engine to

be populated.

A rules engine is needed to handle the different decision rules that are

specific to the organization and the plastic bags manufacturing

environment.

The operation managers and planners should be able to amend the

productions (jobs) scheduled and totally reconfigure the production

line.

G. Conclusion

Microsoft Dynamics AX is an ERP system that can be used to create a very flexible and yet

powerful production scheduling system. In the first part of this document, we have

presented the basic concepts of the production scheduling and then we have done the fit

gap analysis.

In the next part, we will present the modeling of the target solution.

14

II. Part II: Blown Film Manufacturing Process

A. Questionnaire

We interviewed the users in order to have a better understanding of the current

manufacturing and planning system.

Below are the questions that we’ll use to interview the people that are in charge of the

production planning and scheduling.

1. Ledger account

What are the ledger accounts number of the following entries?

Ledger Account group

Account – WIP Account Costing

WIP Issue Issue

WIP Account Offset Account

2. Extruder capacity

What are the factors that determine the throughput capacity of an extruder?

What should be the daily maximum capacity of each machine?

What should be the minimum capacity required to run each work center?

3. Setup time on an extruder

What are the factors that influence the setup time?

We noticed that it usually takes between 15 to 30 min to calibrate an extruder from the

starting point up to its optimum run range.

Is this the right time interval or does the “startup time” differ from one machine to

another?

4. Preferred Material

Is there any preferred material for some machines?

Which material can only run on one machine and what is the minimum load required to

start production?

15

5. Downstream Equipment

Which production lines use specific downstream equipment? If there are any, can we

have the list of Machines attached to the downstream equipment?

6. Width and Gauge

What are the minimum and maximum width and gauge for each work center?

7. Number of web on production line

What are the factors that influence the choice of the number of web on a production

line? For example, we have noticed that the gauge, width and the total weight of a

production order influence the choice of an extruder, thus the number of web.

We would like to have more details on how to control the number of web.

8. Setup time by Material

What is the general setup time from one material to another?

For example what is the setup time from LLRC to LLRB?

9. Setup time by color

What is the general setup time from one color to another?

For example what is the setup time from Red or black to clear?

10. Term and Definition

Production Line: A Production line is composed of an extruder and the downstream

equipment.

B. Understand the Blown Plastic Manufacturing process

We used the model below to capture the main transactions that occur during the

production scheduling process.

1. Plastic Bags properties

This diagram helps in explaining how the machines are selected using our customized

scheduling engine.

Each plastic bag has the following attribute:

1. Width in inches

2. Gauge in mil

16

3. Color

4. Main material

5. And the bag specs which can be individually folded, star seal and more

6. Packing type which can be separated or rolls

Fig 3: Plastic bag physical properties

2. Blown Film Extrusion Description

The equipment used in blown film extrusion is shown below. The method of making

blown film distinguishes the process from other extrusion methods. The unique features

about a blown film extrusion line are the die, the method of cooling the film, the

collapsing tower, and the film winder.

Fig 4: Blown Film Line

17

Air is introduced through a hole in the center of the die to blow up the tube like a

balloon. A high speed air ring mounted on top of the die blows into the hot film to cool

it. The collapsing frame takes the bubble and collapses the tubular film before it is pulled

through the nip rolls. The tube is flattened to create what is known as a "lay-flat" tube.

The lay flat tube is taken back down the extrusion town via idler rolls. The film is either

kept as such or the edges are slit off to produce two flat film sheets and wound into

reels.

3. Extruder blower properties

For every machine (Extruder), we have the following properties:

o A minimum and maximum width of the film that can be blown (Bubble

Diameter)

o A minimum and maximum plastic film gauge

o The preferred and restricted material

o And finally the minimum and maximum output capacity

Fig 5: Blow film bubble

4. Various parameters used in film blowing process

𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑐ℎ 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜(𝑇𝑆𝑅) = 𝐷𝑖𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑝

𝐹𝑖𝑙𝑚 𝐺𝑎𝑢𝑔𝑒

𝐵𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑈𝑝 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 (𝐵𝑈𝑅) = 𝑏𝑢𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟

𝐷𝑖𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟

𝐷𝑟𝑎𝑤𝑛 𝐷𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑅𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 = 𝐷𝑖𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑝

𝐹𝑖𝑙𝑚 𝐺𝑎𝑢𝑔𝑒 𝑋 𝐵𝑈𝑅

18

𝐹𝑖𝑙𝑚 𝐺𝑎𝑢𝑔𝑒 = 𝐷𝑖𝑒 𝑔𝑎𝑝

𝐷𝐷𝑅 𝑋 𝐵𝑈𝑅

𝐿𝑎𝑦 𝐹𝑙𝑎𝑡 𝑊𝑖𝑑𝑡ℎ = 𝜋 𝑋 𝐵𝑢𝑏𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝐷𝑖𝑎𝑚𝑡𝑒𝑟

2

5. Plastic Film extrusion downstream equipment properties

For every tool, we have the following properties:

o Min / Max Width

o Preferred Production Line

o Master Route

FIG 6.1: FIG SEPARATOR TOOL (SHEETING) FIG 6.2 WINDING TOOLS

19

6. Production Line example

The figure 6 below is an example of a production line. This production line is composed of:

A Blown extruder

Winding machine (tool)

The winding machine can be moveable. If a tool is moveable, we can say that our

production line is configurable. The configuration of the production line will depend on

the finished goods scheduled to be produced.

Fig 7: Typical Production line

20

7. Process Summary

From what we’ve written above, we now understand that the production scheduling is dependent on

three major components:

The item or finished goods properties

The extruder (blown film extruder) properties

The downstream equipment properties

The primary focus of the scheduling engine would be to optimize the usage of the

extruders and also reduce the amount of scrap created during the processing activities.

The secondary area attention would be allocating the downstream equipment to the

production line and focusing on reducing the number of their travel from one

production to another. Finally, manufacture the right finished goods at the optimal

process time.

21

III. Part III: Manufacturing Planning and Control System

In this section, we will introduce the notions around the manufacturing planning and the

control system. We will discuss about the master scheduling, material requirement

planning, and the capacity management. Priority Capacity

PRODUCTION

PLAN RESOURCE

PLAN

Long Range

PLAN

MASTER PRODUCTION

PLAN

ROUGH-CUT CAPACITY

PLAN

Medium Range

MATERIAL

REQUIREMENTS PLAN

CAPACITY MANAGEMENT

PLAN

IMPLEMENT/ CONTROL

Short Range

PRODUCTION

ACTIVITY CONTROL

CAPACITY CONTROL

Short Range

Fig 8: Planning levels

The figure 8 is the illustration of the interrelationship between the Material and the

Capacity Management. For example the master production plan is dependent upon the

rough-cut capacity plan. We will explain each notion and show how they are related.

22

Fig 9: Requirements and Capacity relation process flow

23

Fig 10: Manufacturing Planning and Control System

A. Strategic Business Plan

The strategic business plan is a statement of the major goals and objectives the company

expects to achieve over the next 2 to 10 years or more. It is a statement of the broad

directions of the firm and shows the kind of business—product lines, markets, and so

on—the firm wants to do in the future. The plan gives general directions about how the

company hopes to achieve these objectives. It is based upon a long range of forecasts

and includes participation from marketing, finance, production, and engineering. We will

not discuss the details of the strategic business plan because it is out of the scope of this

document. We emphasize on this point to show the different factors to consider when

you are implementing a Production scheduling solution.

B. Production Plan

Given the objectives set by the strategic business plan, the production management is

concerned by the following:

The quantities of each product group that must be produced in each

period.

The desired inventory levels.

INPUT OUTPUT

Business Plan Financial Plan Marketing Plan Capacity

PRODUCTION PLAN Aggregate Plan • By-Product Groups • Inventory Levels

Production Plan Forecasts Customer Orders Inventory Capacity

MASTER PRODUCTION

SCHEDULE

Detailed Plan • By Week • By End Item

MPS, Item Master Drawing / specs. Bill of Materials Inventory, Capacity/ Routing Work center master Requirements Operations details

MATERIAL REQUIREMENTS

PLAN

Time-Phased Manufacturing and Purchase Orders • For Raw Material • For Components

PURCHASING

PRODUCTION ACTIVITY CONTROL

24

The resources of equipment, labor, and material needed in each

period.

The availability of the resources needed.

Production planners must devise a plan to satisfy the market demand with the resources

available to the company. This will involve determining the resources needed to meet

market demand, comparing the results to the available resources, and devising a plan to

balance requirements and availability.

This process of determining the resources required and comparing them to the available

resources takes place at each of the planning levels and is the problem of capacity

management. For effective planning, there must be a balance between priority and

capacity.

C. Master Production Scheduling

The master production schedule (MPS) is a plan for the production of individual end

items. It breaks down the production plan to show, for each period, the quantity of each

end item to be made. Inputs to the MPS are the production plan, the forecast for

individual end items, sales orders, inventories, and existing capacity.

The level of detail required by the MPS is higher than the one for the production plan.

Whereas the production plan was based upon families of products (Low Density, High

density or Retail trash bags), the master production schedule is developed for individual

end items (each individual trash bag Item for example PVC33-33). The Planning horizon

usually extends from 3 to 18 months but primarily depends on the purchasing and

manufacturing lead times. The term master scheduling describes the process of

developing a master production schedule. The term master production schedule (MPS) is

the end result of this process. Usually, the plans are reviewed and changed weekly or

monthly.

Once the preliminary master production schedules are made, they must be checked

against the available capacity. This process is called rough-cut capacity planning.

25

Fig 11: Master Production Scheduling

The Fig 11 describes the flow of the different activities that are rendered to finally have a

MPS.

1. Customer Order Process

Every working day, the Sales department takes orders from the company’s customers.

The orders are processed. At the end of the process, the sales agent gives the

approximate time of delivery. This lead time can be based on two principles.

o Dynamics AX will calculate the Advance-To-Promise (ATP) and the result will

give the best availability time.

o Or the company can establish lead time policies depending on the type of

items ordered by the customers.

Customers’ order process handling helps in evaluating the quantity of Customs and Stock

of Items needed to be manufactured.

26

Fig 12 Customer Orders Process Flow

2. Inventory Replenishment

The inventory replenishment process is the process by which the amount of stock of the

items required is calculated. The replenishment process calculates the quantity of finished

goods needed back in the inventory. This quantity is based on the safety stock for each

item. The formula used to calculate the quantity of replenishment for each item is shown

below:

𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑄𝑡𝑦 = 𝑄𝑡𝑦 𝑂𝑛ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑 − 𝑄𝑡𝑦 𝑂𝑛 𝑂𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟 − 𝑞𝑡𝑦 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑑 − 𝑆𝑎𝑓𝑒𝑡𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑞𝑡𝑦

Qty On-Hand: Count of an individual item currently available in the inventory

Qty On Order: Quantity of items ordered by customers for each individual item

Qty Reserved: Count of items available in the inventory but currently reserved for an

order

Safety Stock Qty: or Buffer qty: This is the quantity of items required to be kept in the

inventory in order to avoid materials running out stock out.

27

Fig 13 Inventory Replenishment Process

28

The Fig 13 illustrates the process by which the replenishment orders are created. In our

case, the replenishment process is handled by the sales department. The sales manager

for example, will review every morning the items that need some attention and request

production orders that will help put these stock of items back into the inventory.

Not every item that is running out of stock will be replenished, mainly because there are

several factors that determine the replenishment of an item back into the inventory, for

example the seasonality of an item and/or also because of its recent sales’ trend.

Let’s assume that Item ABC sales has increased the last 30 days by 20 %. The replenishment

system could recommend that we only need to manufacture 200 cases back into the

inventory based on the safety stock level. The Sales Manager could order the production of

300 cases instead.

Even though the recommendation from the system is not wrong, these type of conditions

require human attention. For this reason the Sales Manager needs to supervise the

replenishment process and enter the quantities that are in line with the recent trends of the

market.

Par-Level Calculation

Fig 14 Par Level calculation Process

The PAR level stands for “Periodic Automatic Replenishment.”

PAR level refers to the exact amount of product you should have in stock to meet

demands.

29

PAR levels are boundary markers in inventory levels that signal if any replenishment is

necessary.

D. Rough-cut Capacity Planning

The Rough-cut capacity planning checks whether critical resources are available to

support the preliminary master production schedules. Critical resources include bottle –

neck operations, labor, and critical material.

Let’s assume that the preliminary MPS indicates that we will need 2,000,000 lbs. of plastics

bag a month for the next 6 month. The rough-cut capacity planning will evaluate the time

that should be allocated to each resource for the next 6 months in order to fulfil the

future customers’ requests.

Hence, the purpose of rough-cut capacity planning is to check the feasibility of the MPS,

provide warnings of any bottlenecks, ensure utilization of work centers, and advise

vendors of capacity requirements.

E. Material Requirement Planning

The material requirements plan (MRP) is the process following master production

scheduling.

The MRP main goal is to set priorities and determine the material requirements.

Plastic trash bags are manufactured using materials such as Resin, Repro, Calcium and

more. The MRP evaluates the quantity of each material needed in order to have the

finished good items.

The inputs (Fig14) necessary to calculate the MRP are:

The Master Production Scheduling

Bill of Materials ( BOM Explosion)

The Raw material and finished goods Inventory

Capacity Requirement Planning

Order Process Planning

We have already mentioned the MPS in the preceding sections, here we will discuss a little bit

about the Bill of Material (BOM).

30

Fig 15 Material Requirement Planning

1. Bill of Material

The bill of material describes the material content of a product at each stocking level in

the manufacturing process. The item being produced is called a parent, and the materials

required to produce the item are components.

BOM 123 for Item ABC

Material /

Components

Qty Unit Per Series

Resin 10 Lbs. 1

Calcium 1 Lbs. 1

Box 1 Piece 1

Label 1 Piece 1

The BOM explosion is the process by which the definitive quantity of material needed for

each production order is calculated. The BOM explosion uses the BOM document with

the production order quantity to calculate the total number of Material needed.

31

Using our example for the ABC Item, we assume that the production order of ABC is

10,000 bags meaning 100 boxes of 100 bags each. The explosion will display the

following results:

Calculation of the Required Material for Item ABC in Prod 123

Material /

Components

Qty Unit Per Series Number of

series

Required

Qty

Resin 10 Lbs. 1 100 1000

Calcium 1 Lbs. 1 100 100

Box 1 Piece 1 100 100

Label 1 Piece 1 100 100

The quantity of these materials is not the final quantity of materials required because we

have to take into account the scraps’ factor.

2. Scrap Factor

Scraps are by-products of the manufacturing activities. During manufacturing activities,

scraps are generated. Thus, we need more than 1000 lbs. of Resin to produce 10,000

bags. Let’s assume that the scrap factor is 10 %, this ratio means that for each 100 lbs.,

we generate 10 lbs. of scrap.

Hence, if we want to produce 10,000 bags, we would need 1,111 lbs. of the raw resin.

3. Material Requirement Calculation Process

Fig 17 describes the process flow that leads to the calculation of the MRP. In summary,

when the MPS is published, the Gross MRP is generated for each period. This Gross MRP

is then reduced by the quantity of finished goods available in the inventory. This reduced

quantity is called Net MRP (Fig 18). The net requirement is the firm quantity of material

needed to fulfil the actual demand. Often, the material required to fulfil one production

order is not available in the raw materials' warehouse. In that case, the material stock out

list needs to be updated by the quantity of material needed to be purchased.

Formulas

𝑁𝑒𝑡 𝑀𝑅𝑃 = 𝐺𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 − 𝐴𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝐹𝐺 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 ∗

𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑁𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑑 = 𝐴𝑣𝑎𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 − 𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑄𝑡𝑦

32

Note: The available FG inventory here is the total quantity of finished good available in

inventory.

Fig 16 Material Requirement Planning

33

Fig 17 Net Material requirement calculation

F. Capacity Requirement Planning

The capacity required is the amount (volume) of resource required in order to fulfil a Net

MRP over a certain period of time.

The resources are the machines, the operators and the tools that are needed to

manufacture a finished good. The notion of capacity is closely related to the term load. A

load is the amount of work assigned to a resource (or group of resource). The unit of

measure of the load is most of times associated with the notion of time. For example “lbs.

per hr.”, “Man per day” etc… In the manufacturing environment, the resource thus the

capacity are most of the time limited.

Hence, a good material requirement planning needs to be associated with good capacity

planning. Capacity planning (Fig 16) is the process of determining the resources required

to meet the priority plan and the methods needed to make that capacity available.

Production planning, master production scheduling, and material requirements planning

determine priorities: what is wanted and when. These priority plans cannot be

implemented, unless the firm has sufficient capacity to fulfill the demand. Capacity

planning, thus, links the various production priority schedules to manufacturing resources.

34

Fig 18 factor that determine the Capacity requirement planning

G. Production Activity Control and Purchasing

Purchasing and Production Activity control (PAC) represent the implementation and the

control phases of the production planning and control system. Purchasing is responsible

for establishing and controlling the flow of raw materials into the factory. The PAC is

responsible for planning and controlling the flow of work throughout the factory.

The planning horizon is very short, perhaps from a day to a month. The level of detail is

high since it is concerned with individual components, workstations, and orders. Plans are

reviewed and revised daily.

If you refer to the figure 32 on page 35, you can observe the following:

1- When there is not enough material to be picked for manufacturing, the required

material is ultimately purchased from outside supplier.

2- In case there is enough material. The planner schedules the production sequences.

35

Fig.32. Scheduling Engine machine selection process model

H. Conclusion

In this section, we reviewed the manufacturing planning and control system. This section

was a high level view of the whole system. The manufacturing planning and control

system comprise several processes including the Master Production Planning, the Material

Requirement Planning, the Capacity planning and more.

The part IV of this document will discuss the solution design of the project.

We will show how we have implemented the inventory replenishment process, the

production scheduling using priorities and more.

Reference

Eastman, Blown Film line, retrieve from http://www.eastman.com/Markets/medical_technical_center/

Processing/Extrusion/Pages/BF_Process.aspx on 06/25/2014

IJ. R. Tony Arnold and Al. (2008), Introduction to Materials Management, Pearson Prentice Hall Jerry Clement and al. (1992), manufacturing data structures, Oliver Wight

http://www.eastman.com/Markets/medical_technical_center/%20Processing/Extrusion/Pages/BF_Process.aspx

http://www.eastman.com/Markets/medical_technical_center/%20Processing/Extrusion/Pages/BF_Process.aspx

36

IV. Part IV: Solution Design Document

This section will be focusing on the solution design for this project using Microsoft

Dynamics AX 2009. During the course of this discussion, we will emphasize on the gap

between Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and the target solution. We will also explain the

reason why we made certain choices during this solution Design. The part V of the

document will show how to use each solution component that has been designed and

developed. We will do this using multiple scenarios.

The solution design will not tackle the Strategic and Production plans.

A. Master Production Schedules

1. Make-to-stock vs Make-to-Order

The implementation of the MPS in a make-to-stock environment is different from its

implementation in a Make-to-Order environment. In fact, there is virtually no MPS in the

Make-To-Order production environment.

The Make-to-stock or Push process control is a production system in which the finished

goods items are produced and store in the warehouse. Once there is an order for these

items they can be picked from the storage area and shipped to the customers. In this

type of manufacturing environment it is easy to forecast the demand and thus initiate a

Master Production Schedule.

In the other hand, the Make-to-Order or Pull process control is a production system

where finished goods items are manufactured only when there is an order placed for this

item. Most of the time, these items are unique to a specific customer. These type of items

are rarely stocked into the finished good inventory.

In its standard version, Microsoft Dynamics AX has implemented the MPS as you can see

it on Fig. 19. Using, Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2009 you can open the Master Scheduling

form by using the following path: Master Planning > Periodic> Master Planning.

The problem with the Master Scheduling from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is that you

have very few options that will help setup your master plan. We are not going to explain

how the Master Planning works here. Instead, we will discuss about the solution that we

have implemented to suit our needs.

37

1. Create Production from Sales Order

The “Create Production from Sales Order” Form is the implementation of the Pull control

system (Make-to-Order). The “Create Production from Sales Order” form main role is to

create a production order for customs items. This feature is not available in the standard

version of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

The process

Below is the process flow on how production orders are created from Sales Orders.

Mak

e-to

- O

rder

Pro

duct

ion

Sale

s D

ep

art

me

nt

Dyn

amic

s A

X P

rod

uct

ion

D

ep

art

me

nt

Start

Register Sales Order Type Make-

to-Order

Validate Sales Order

Customer on-hold etc.

Create Production Order

Confirm Sales order

Open the “Create Production from

sales order “

Validate Sales Orders

Submit Production Orders

Production Orders Creation Complete

Fig. 19: Create production Order Sales Orders Process

38

Create Production from Sales Order Form

Fig.20: Unprocessed Sales Orders Form, Overview Tab

Fig. 21: Unprocessed Sales Orders General Tab

39

Fields / Group Description

Overview Tab

Sales Order This field displays the Sales Order Numbers

Line Number Sales Order Line Number

Item ID Finished Goods item ID

Quantity Quantity of finished good ordered.

Status This fields shows the status of the sales order.

The status can be :

Unprocessed : no production exist against the SO line

Processed: A production has been created for this SO

line

2. Replenishment Profile

The replenishment Profile is a solution that we designed and developed as a workaround

of the standard Master scheduling for stock items.

The Replenishment Profile is the implementation of the inventory replenishment section of

the Master Production scheduling (Part III C 2 of this document).

Replenishment Profile Wireframe

Header

TotalSetupOverview

FuturesOverview Week MonthAction

Filters Inventory Level Status

Pegging

Item Number Item Name Scheduled On hand RequiredOn order To production Select

Reference Sales Order Line Number Week of Scheduled QuantityProduction

No DialogEnter Text

Critical

Required

Above PAR

Fig 22. Replenishment Profile Wireframe

40

Replenishment Profile Form

Fig. 23 Replenishment Profile Form

The Ideas behind the form design

Design the form exactly as per the users’ requirement

Display the information as needed by the end-users

Show inventory and future receipt status in real time

Display inventory issues and receipt history to allow the users to take better

replenishment decisions

The lower part of the form shows the pegging transactions that required inventory

replenishment

Principal fields

Sales Orders

Production quantity

41

The Replenishment form description

Form path: Inventory Management >> Inquiries >> Replenishment

The form is divided into 3 sections:

1. The filters section

2. Item inventory level section

3. Pegging section

The filters Section

Fig 24The filter section of the Replenishment form

The users can use this section of the form to filter the inventory items by:

The item status which could be

1) Active,

2) Obsolete

3) All, to display all items regardless of their status

No dialog check box: use this to disable the assistance dialog box.

Inventory level status:

Critical , when the Required quantity is below the quantity on-hand and the

scheduled receipt

Required, when the scheduled receipt quantity is greater than or equal to the

required quantity.

Above PAR , when the required quantity is below zero

42

The inventory level section

Fig. 25 Overview Tab (trunked display)

Note: Please note that the overview tab of the form has been trunked to allow screenshot

image to fit the page.

Overview Tab

Field Description

Item number Identify item.

Item name Description of the item.

Available Quantity available to promise. The Available quantity is the

uncommitted inventory balance.

Available = 'Tot. On-hand' - 'Physical reserved'

Physical reserved Quantity reserved of the physical quantity

On order Quantity on order

Note : Quantity on order concerns only Sales Orders placed

against this item

In Prod Physical quantity scheduled to be received, but not posted

Scheduled Scheduled production quantity.

Note: The quantity scheduled here is dynamic. Once any

production attached to this item starts, the scheduled quantity

will decrease.

Par level Minimum on-hand, safety stock applying to the item when

master scheduling

43

Required Quantity needed to fulfill actual requirement.

Required Quantity calculation= Total On-hand - Physically

Reserved -On Order- PAR level

To Production Quantity to be sent to production

To Production = Max (Required; Skid Qty; Min Inventory Qty.)

Split Use the Split option to split the quantity that is needed to

produce 2 production orders.

Note: the split quantity = Max ( Split Qty; Min Inventory Qty;

Skid Qty)

Num. of Prod Number of production , this field helps creating multiple

production orders at once

Select This check box allows the users to "Firm" the quantity required

and then create a production order

Skid qty Displays the quantity of cases on skid or pallet

Net weight Net weight of one case

Skid Weight Skid Net Weight (we don’t consider here the tare weight)

Prod Weight Compute here the production order ‘s weight

Setup Tab

Total Tab

Field Description

Required Quantity needed to fulfill actual requirement.

Required Quantity calculation= [Total On-hand] –

[Physically Reserved] + [Scheduled]- [On Order]- PAR

level

Field Description

Item group Item group that the item is attached to.

Coverage

group

Group that determines how a requirement is calculated for the

item.

Buyer

group

Identification of the buyer's group.

Quantity

per layer

Quantity per layer on standard pallet

Net weight Net weight of inventory item for one inventory unit

Par level Minimum on-hand, safety stock applying to the item when

master scheduling

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/RequiredQty

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/ItemGroupId

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/ReqGroupId

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/ReqGroupId

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/ItemBuyerGroupId

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/ItemBuyerGroupId

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/qtyPerLayer

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/qtyPerLayer

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/NetWeight

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/MinInventOnhand

44

Physical reserved Quantity reserved of the physical quantity

Received Physical quantity received, but not posted

On order Quantity on order

Note : Quantity on order concerns only Sales Orders

placed against this item

On hand Physical quantity available from the inventory

Here it is the total quantity on-hand for this item

Started production

quantity

Quantity of Finished Goods production started

The Pegging section

The pegging section of the Replenishment form uses 4 tabs to display data about the

finished good item transaction.

Replenishment Form, Pegging, Overview Tab

The Overview tab shows the different requirement (Productions, Sales Orders) that have

that pending transactions.

For example when a production is scheduled but not started or when a sales Order is not

fulfilled.

Fig. 26: Replenishment Form, Pegging Overview Tab

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/ReservPhysical

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/Received

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/OnOrder

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/PhysicalInvent

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/InProd

appldoc://Tables/API_tmpInventReq/InProd

45

Fields Description

Sales Order Sales Order number that is pegging with this items.

Line Number Sales Order Line number

Weekof This field displays the week when the transaction should be

made. For example, for a particular sales order, the “week of” will

be the week of the Requested shipment and for production the

“week of” is the week the production should be rendered.

Production Production number pegged to this Finished Good item but not

yet fulfilled

Date Scheduled Show the scheduled date

Quantity Quantity scheduled or on the sales Order

Replenishment Form, Pegging, Future Tab

Fig. 27 Replenishment Form, Pegging, Future Tab

Fields Description

Production Production number pegged to this

Finished Good item but not yet fulfilled

Sales Order Sales Order number that is pegging with

these items.

Line Number Sales Order Line number

Date

Shows the future message date

Started Shows the started quantity for a

particular production order

Report remainder as Finished Quantity remainder after report as

finished

46

Pegging Week and Month Tabs

Fig. 28: Pegging section showing weekly issues and receipts

Fig. 29: Pegging section showing monthly issues and receipts

47

Fig. 30: Pegging section showing monthly issues and receipts graph

B. Material Requirement

The material requirement feature of the production scheduling module is implemented

by the BOM explosion. The BOM explosion is a process that happens on the server side

of the application. The BOM explosion process is standard to Dynamics AX, so there is

no need to design a solution for that. Nevertheless, we have customized or built some

applications that will use the calculated materials required:

o The Material Stock Out List form

o The scheduling buffer that we will talk about in the production activity control

section.

1. BOM Explosion

The BOM explosion process is a standard feature handled by Microsoft Dynamics AX.

The processes that create the production orders either from the Replenishment or the

“Create Production from Sales Orders” forms, explode the BOM at the same time.

The BOM explosion calculates the amount of components (material) required for each

production order.

48

The BOM explosion is essential for the manufacturing environment because it helps in

calculating the following:

The total cost of each material ( component)

The total quantity of materials needed for each production

orders

If the BOM is composed of phantom items(components), the

phantom will be exploded at the same time to reveal the actual

materials needed

Phantom BOM : A bill of material is used to describe the components of a parent part that

will be built as part of a higher-level parent part. The term "phantom" is used to indicate that

the part never really existed as a stock item, but it is built along with the production of the

higher-level part that is driving an overall production order. Creating bills of materials as

phantoms allows the manufacturing order picking list and the Material Requirements

Planning (MRP) features to explode through the phantom item down to the lower-level parts.

Phantom explosion: The process of calculating the demand for the materials required for a

non-stocked subassembly that is built during the production process of the parent

component. Phantom explosion allows the items that make up the phantom item to be

shown in the production BOM.

2. Material Stockout List form

The material stockout list form calculates the total number of materials that could not

meet the current requirements.

Using this form, the user will be able to see which material is running out of stock and

ultimately send the required quantity to the procurement department.

49

Fig. 31: Material stockout list Form

C. Production Activity Control

1. The Scheduling Engine

The scheduling engine is the brain of the whole production scheduling module.

The Scheduling engine runs in the background every time there is a need to schedule the

weekly production orders or reschedule a production order.

Scheduling Engine Process Model

The diagram below shows the high level view of scheduling engine process model.

In order to schedule a production order, the scheduling engine has to do with the

following:

Find the appropriate production pool

Then select the best machines that meet the specifications of the

production order. In addition :

the machine should be able to run ,

the machine should have enough left for the scheduling period

And more…

Finally, the scheduling engine will choose a machine that can run this

production order based on a usage ranking algorithm.

50

Fig.32. Scheduling Engine machine selection process model

Route updating and job sequencing

After the scheduling engine has selected the machines that will run each production

order, and also after leaving aside the production orders that could not be scheduled due

to the capacity available, the scheduling engine will update the route of every production

order that will be scheduled and do a job sequencing.

2. Production Scheduling

The production scheduling is composed of several processes that have been designed to

help the production planner achieve his tasks.

Once the materials required are known, it is now possible to schedule the production

based on the company business rules, the finished good items' attributes and the work

centers' attributes.

Scheduling Priority Parameters form

The scheduling priority parameter form is the form that helps determining the hierarchy

among the production orders attributes.

Path: Root>Production > Common area>Scheduling Priority

51

For this project we have identified lots of attributes of a production order but we decided

to keep only five (5) of them:

The material : here we consider only the main BOM component, for example

LL, HD and more

The Color : the color of the plastic film is also important , for example we have

clear, black and white films

Customer: this attribute is related to all items type customs. If these items come

high in the priority parameter setting, it means that the scheduling engine

should consider them first.

Due Date: the due date is another attribute of the production that comes into

consideration here. If the Due date comes high in priority, the scheduling

engine should consider the attribute first when scheduling. The Due Date

parameter indicates to the scheduling engine at which level it needs to consider

production orders with the closest ( or farthest) due date.

Sort by Quantity: this is the last attribute that we decided to consider when it

comes to the Production Priority Parameters form. Using the “Sort by Quantity”

parameter, the planner could schedule the production orders so that they will

run production in batch or not. By default, we have implemented the

production scheduling according to the SMED model1.

The figure 32 below shows the Production Priority Parameters form.

1 SMED: According to Wikipedia “Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) is one of the many lean production methods for reducing waste in a manufacturing process. It provides a rapid and efficient way of converting a manufacturing process from running the current product to running the next product. This rapid changeover is key to reducing production lot sizes and thereby improving flow (Mura).” Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-Minute_Exchange_of_Die

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-Minute_Exchange_of_Die

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-Minute_Exchange_of_Die

52

Fig 32: Production Priority Parameters

Field Name Description

Pool# Use this field to select the production pool

number. Here we have 3 production pools:

Prio 1, 2,3,4,5 Use these fields to select your attribute

priorities.

Material Use this field to select the material names.

Color Select the color that you think is the main

priority

Customer Use this field to select a specific customer

that could have priority.

Due Date Use this if you want to schedule by the

closest or any due date

Sort Qty Use this to sort by qty ascending or

descending

53

Batch Use this, if you want a batch scheduling. If

chosen, the system could not apply the

SMED principle.

Default SMED principle, if selected the system will

schedule the job ( production) while try

avoid batch scheduling as much as possible

Scheduling buffer

In a semi-automatic production job scheduling, the Scheduling buffer helps the Planner

double-check the calculation done by the scheduling engine.

The Scheduling Buffer schedules production jobs by department. After the Scheduling

engine is run, the scheduling engine show the result in a form such as the one below in

fig. 32

The data displayed in the Scheduling Buffer form can be divided into 6 groups as drawn

in fig.32. The groups are:

The film details group: the film color , main material , total width, and gauge

Process times group: queue time , setup time , process time

Item name

Scheduling time group : start time , start date , end time and end date

work centers group : Work Center ( Production line #), Work Center 1( tool 1) and

Work center 2 (tool 2 )

Alternative Work Centers Group: Use this group to switch from one work center to

another.

Fig. 33: Scheduling Buffer form

54

3. Kanban Board

A Kanban board is a sign board. The Kanban board has many iterations, we chose a

design of a Kanban board that is simple for the users and yet a powerful tool for

scheduling.

The fig. 33 shows a portion of the Kanban board that we have customized for this

solution.

Fig. 34: Kanban Board Form

The display of the Kanban board has been divided into four (4) sections:

The sections are:

Filters area (1): use this group to select a production department , filter for the

production order tickets by their job status or filter the tickets by their scheduling

date

Update field area (2): the section of the form is used to validate and / or update

the production orders that have been rescheduled.

The Ticket area (3): this section shows for each day, the production orders' tickets

that have been scheduled. The part V of this document contains the walkthroughs

on how to use the Kanban board.

The production I/O control area (4): This portion of the form shows the input and

output level of each work center.

55

Ticket details area(5) : use this part of the form to see the production order

details, the Job scheduling details, the tools used for the selected job and the

finished good BOM details.

Form Description

The Kanban board is the Japanese term to designate a sign board. When using a Kanban

board, the user will be able to have a simple yet informative view about the production

order’s jobs that have been scheduled or are running currently.

Using the Kanban board the users will be able to:

Know which production orders have been scheduled for this week

Inform the planner about the production orders that become highly important to

be rendered. The sales agent can do this by making the production order “hot”

See which production orders that can be delayed.

Filter the production orders by status

Filter and Update Sections

The filter section of the Kanban contains the control objects that allow the users to take

the following actions:

Filter by department : Use this drop-down menu to move from one

production department to another

Job Status: the drop-down menu help filtering the job order tickets by

the job status. This status can be: Coming, Waiting, Started and End.

Next, Previous and Calendar controls buttons: Use these controls to

move forward and backward one day at a time or use the calendar

control to select a specific day.

Search: the control button helps retrieving a job order ticket for the

Kanban board.

Stockout details: use this to open the Material stockout list form.

4. Gantt Chart

The Gantt chart (fig.35) is used to display a time-phased production job schedule. The

Gantt chart form shows the setup and process duration for each production order and

the date and time at which they have been scheduled. The main purpose of the Gantt

chart is primary to show the duration of each work order (production order) and

secondary to make the production order rescheduling possible.

56

Fig.35: Gantt chart Form

Form Description

To open the Gantt chart, you will need to open the Gantt chart table first.

To do this go to : Basic > Inquiries > Gantt table > Gantt

57

Overview

View a list of all of the Gantt tables.

General

Edit any extended information about a Gantt table.

Work centers

Select the work center or work center groups that you want to include in the table.

To open a Gantt Chart, highlight a Gantt chart line and click on the Gantt button.

The Gantt chart will open (refer to Fig. 35).

Note that we made some customizations from the original Gantt chart form to suit our

needs.

Our customized Gantt Chart is divided into 10 areas that will be described below

Area# 1: the Nodes area, we use this area to display the different production order

scheduled for that specific day. The nodes are aligned into lanes each representing a work

center.

58

Area #2: This area lists the work centers (production line)

where the production jobs (orders) have been scheduled.

The figure at the right side represents the work centers

number 05 and 06

Area # 3: Netronic Software has designed this area to display the date and time on the XGantt

Chart ActiveX.

Area #4: This part of the form represents the

Updating area. You can use this area to get the

latest status of the overall scheduling or to

recalculate the scheduling after the user rearrange

the job sequencing.

Areas ## 5 ,6,7,8,9,10 : These sections of the form are used for:

The area 5 contains the buttons that are used to display and hide the areas 7, 8, 9, 10

The area #6 is used to zoom in and out the chart display and it is also a control that

helps searching for a specific production order.

The areas##7, 8,9, 10 are used to display the related Production details, Job details,

work centers details and date and time details

59

V. Part V Operation Phase

A. Master Production Schedules

1. Create Production From Sales Order

We will use the scenario below to illustrate how we can create a production Order from a

sales Order line.

Scenario

Morel, the sales agent receives a custom item order from the customer John Willis AXLab

(JW AXLab). JW AXLab wants 500 cases of item JWAXLab101.

Description

Item Name JWAXLab101

Order 500 cases

Sales Order 9741411S-1

We would need to create a production order for this sales order.

How to do it

Step1

Create a sales order and make sure that the Print production order is checked.

Sales Order 9741411S and line 1

Step 2

Open the “Create Production From Sales Order” form

Go to: Master Planning > Inquiries > Create production from sales order

For this example, we will create only one production order from a sales order. In reality, this

process is done for bulk production orders creation.

Step 3

In the form, click on Select button

A query form will appear.

60

Query Form

Step 4

In the order line field, enter the sales order

number, here it is: 9741411S.

Then press on the OK button to finalize

your selection.

SO#

9741411S

Selected

In the Create Production from Sales order

form, you can see that the sales order line

have been selected. The status of this sales

order is “Unprocessed” meaning that there

is no production against this customer

order.

SO# 9741411S shown unprocessed

Step 5: Click the OK button to create a production order from this form.

If we go back to the sales order form, you can see that a production order ( 196021P) is now

assigned to sales order 9741411S

Fig .41: SO#

9741411S line 1

updated with

Prod# 196021P

61

2. Replenishment Form

We will use the following example to understand how we should work with the form.

Example:

The sales agent or the sales manager opens the Replenishment form located at:

Inventory Management >> Inquiries >> Replenishment (Fig. 22)

She reviews the form and notices that there are several Items that needed to be

produced. If no action is taken, the company will most likely go out of stock for these

items.

Note: For the sake of simplicity we will choose only 1 item to be replenished.

She decided that she will create a production order for Item “174612CL”.

The table below summarizes the inventory status of item “174612CL”

Item Number 174612CL

Available 300

Physical Reserved 8

On Order 123

In Prod* 0

PAR Level 235

Skid Qty 100

Based on the data in the table above, we can calculate the required quantity in order to

avoid that the item goes out of stock.

Required = the required quantity

Required = Available+ in Prod -On Order- PAR level

Required =300+0-123-235= -58

Thus, we need 58 cases to keep the item at a safety stock level (or at PAR Level)

But the Sales Manager doesn’t want to produce just 58 cases because it’s not cost

effective. The company rules set the minimum production quantity at a Skid Qty. So, in

our case the minimum quantity is 100 cases.

This rule is already incorporated within the Replenishment application and “100” is shown

in the “To Production” field.

Fig. 37: Item 174612CL inventory level status

62

Fig. 38: Item 174612CL Pegging Overview Tab

In the pegging section of the form, you can see that 56+60+15=123 which is the total

number of cases on order.

Create a Production Order

To create the Production order for Item 174612CL, the sales manager will click on the

select check box in the requirement section of the form.

Then, she will make 2 clicks on Option>> Firm button.

The first click is meant to review the quantity to be produced and the last click is to create

the production order. Once the production order is created, a dialog box will pop up to

notify her that the new production is created.

Fig. 40: Production order Creation notification.

The pegging section now shows the production order created

63

Fig. 39: Production Order No. 195515P of 100 cases created

Setup the Item’s Inventory order

Now let’s consider another item named Item CHEL 55 CLR HP.

The table below summarized the inventory status of item “CHEL 55 CLR HP”

Item Number CHEL 55 CLR HP

Available 501

Physical Reserved 200

On Order 0

In Prod 0

PAR Level 875

Skid Qty 100

The Quantity that is displayed in the “To Production” field for item CHEL 55 CLR HP is

374 Cases.

Fig.41: item CHEL55CLR HP To Production qty=374

Because it is not cost effective to have just 375 cases manufactured, the company

decided to produce at least 400 cases per lot.

To do this, the Sales Manager needs to setup the inventory order for item CHEL 55 CLR

HP.

Procedure

64

Open the Replenishment Profile form: Inventory Management >> Inquiries >>

Replenishment Profile

Select the item CHEL 55 CLR HP and Click on the Setup button and finally click on

the Inventory tab.

Next enter the following inventory order quantities

Inventory Order Setting

Multiple 100

Min. Order Quantity 400

Max. Order Quantity 900

Standard Order Quantity 500

Fig. 42 : item CHEL 55 HP inventory order setup tab

After setting up the item, close the form and click on the Refresh button to refresh the

data.

Fig. 43: item CHEL 55 HP To Production qty updated

The figure above shows that the “To production” quantity is 400 cases even though the

required quantity is “375 cases” which is already above the 100 cases / skid.

Create multiple Production Orders

65

In this example the user wants to split the “To production” qty into 3 production orders.

Once the “To Production” quantity is split, the application will create 3 production orders

to reflect this change.

The table below summarized the inventory status of item “CXP-3658XXX”

Item Number CXP-3658XXX

Available 2

Physical Reserved 0

On Order 260

In Prod* 0

PAR Level 425

Skid Qty 60

To Production 683

The figure below shows that there are 3 sales orders that need some attentions.

Fig. 44: Sales Orders pegging

The Sales Manager decides that the 260 cases on order should have the priority in

production activities and the remainder can be manufactured later. This is the reason

why, the Sales Manager wants to slip the “To production” quantity.

The production rule is to manufacture bags by multiple of skid quantity. In this case, the

sales manager will not order 260 cases but 300 cases or 5 pallets.

She also decided to create 2 more production orders (with lower priorities) of 240 cases

each.

Procedure:

To do this, the Sales Manager selects the item CXP-3658XXX

Enter 300 in the split field

Enter 240 in the “To Production” field

Enter 2 in the Num. of Prod field

Click on the select field check box

Then click on Option >> Firm to firm the production Orders

66

Fig.41: Create multiple Production Order for item CXP-3658XXX

In the figure above you can see that there are 3 productions orders that will be created.

The quantities will be 240, 300 and 240 respectively.

Next, she will click on Options>> Firm to finalize the replenishment process for this item.

Fig. 45: Three (3) production orders created for item CXP-3658XXX

The figure above shows 3 production orders of 240, 300 and 240 cases that have been

created. This information can be viewed in the pegging section of the form.

Working with Inventory Order Setting: Lot sizing

Now, let's assume that the Sales Managers or/ the Planning Managers wants to receive

items within the inventory by following certain rules. In our case, the user wants to create

a new production every time the required quantity reaches a specific quantity.

Scenario: The user has setup a lot of 100 cases for Item BP IDC92P620F. This means that

the planner should create production orders by the multiple of 100 cases. The table

below summarized the inventory status of item “CXP-3658XXX”

Item Number BP IDC92P620F

Available 534

Physical Reserved 25

67

On Order 260

In Prod* 0

PAR Level 857

Skid Qty 25

To Production 333

Based on the “To Production” quantity, the system should create 3 production orders of

100 cases, the remainder 33 cases will be scheduled for a future time.

How to do it

On the Replenishment profile form

Click on the Setup button.

A customized Default Inventory Order Setup form will open

Fig.46: Inventory Order settings tab for item BP IDC92P620F

Default Inventory Order Setup Form, Inventory Tab

Here we will work only with the Standard Order Quantity field. Let’s enter 100 as standard

order quantity and close the form

68

Fig 47: Enter 100 in the standard order quantity field

Back to the Replenishment form, let’s refresh all the data by clicking on the Refresh button.

Fig. 48: Item BP IDC92P620F line updated

Now you can see that:

The “To Production” quantity: 100

And number of Production is 3. This means that 3 production Orders of 100 cases

will be created.

To proceed:

Click on the select checkbox

Then click on Options>> Firm

A summary will appear for a final update as shown below

Fig. 49: Production Order Firming Preview

To order productions click on Options >>Firm

69

B. Material Requirement

We have designed several classes (and engines) that work or take the material

requirement as an input. But there is actually no useful application for the end users in the

operation phase.

C. Production Activity Control

1. Production Scheduling

The production scheduling is the process in which the planners schedules the production

orders. This scheduling activities will ultimately create a time-phased job orders.

Scheduled and Rescheduling Rules

There are certain rules that we considered when we were building the scheduling engine.

The Calendar Rules

We should be scheduling jobs only on working days and we should also take into

account the holidays.

The production week starts on Sunday at 12:00 AM

The production week ends on Friday at 12:00 PM

The Cutoff Rule

There is also a rule regarding the cutoff date. Not every production should be taken into

consideration by the scheduling engine.

All other things being equal, the scheduling engine considers the following:

To be considered by the production engine, a production order should have been

created between Wednesdays of the previous week after 12:01 PM and Wednesday of

the current week before 12:00PM.

The Rescheduling Rules

We reschedule any production order when it has not been processed for more

than 2 weeks.

Understanding the rules

Let’s consider the calendar below

July 2014

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

70

Let’s assume that:

Current date 07/17/2014

Current week 07/13-07/18

scheduling date 07/17/2014

Future week 07/20-07/25

Current week sched. date* 07/10/2014

Current week productions

creation week**

07/02-07/09

Future Week productions

creation week

07/09-07/16

At the time of scheduling on Thursday 07/10/2014

Any production order that has been:

Created before 07/02/2014 and not scheduling for the current week will be

scheduled

Scheduled before the current week but not scheduled for this week needs to be

rescheduled

Started before the current week and not rescheduled for this current week will be

rescheduled

Partially reported as finished and not rescheduled for this current week will be

rescheduled and a new Job will be reassigned to the operation

*Current week sched. Date: This is the date when the planner decided to schedule the

productions that are running for this current week (07/02-07/09)

**Current week production creation week: indicates the date interval in which the

production orders that are running this week have been created.

Production Scheduling

Scenario: Let’s continue with the example of the previous section.

Setting up scheduling Priority

Every week scheduling should be based on a plan (a scheduling strategy). We have

created a form that will help to create the scheduling strategy. This form is called the

“Scheduling Priority Form”. The scheduling prioritization is done by department.

71

To open to form go to :

Root > Production>Common

Forms >Scheduling Priority

For this example we will setup a strategy for Low Density department.

Note: Low density plastic films are produced in that department.

In the Pool# select 100 for

Low density

The previous scheduling priority appears.

For this, we want to have the clear LL material scheduled in the first place. Our priority

is to replenish the stock (stock items) before handling Customs items.

To do this, select

In Prio 1: Color

In Prio 2 : Material

In Prio 3: Due Date

In Prio 4: Customer

In Prio 5 : Sort by quanty

In the second part, we will set

3 high priority levels as shown

in the picture.

Close the form and open the scheduling buffer

72

Go to Production> Common Forms >

Scheduling buffer

A Dialog box will appear select 100 for the Low

Density department

Click to start the scheduling engine. The calculation will run for 30 – 1mn. Then the

engine will display its result in the Scheduling buffer form.

Click on the Schedule button to summit your scheduling. The scheduling is done

73

2. Kanban Board

Working with the Kanban board

Fig.50: Kanban Board description

1- Open start the Kanban board

The Kanban board can be openned by going to Production >>Inquiries >>Kanban

(fig. 50)

The Kanban board opens automatically on the scheduling board panel. This panel is

used to help users (customer service, planners etc...) to have a shared view of the

scheduling activities.

2- Filter job orders by their status

On the filter section of the form select a job status that you want to review. In this the

example we want to know which production orders are coming.

Our target worker center (WC) is WC5. The figure below shows the portion of the

jobs scheduled to be run on WC6.

The status of a job is illustrated by the color of the left border.

Bleu= coming ;Orange = waiting ;Yellow= started and more …

74

In this view the Production orders : 195493P-0 , 195479P-0 and 195455P-0 are

coming , while the production order 195227P-0 is waiting

To view the production orders that are coming

on WC5, select the Coming status from the

drop-down menu of the Job status field.

We can see that the Job status field is “Coming” and the tickets have a blue line at

the left border. It is worth knowing that the overall green border to the tickets means

that the these productions are not running late,when it is red that the production

order is running late.

3- Making a Production order ticket “hot”

The production Orders that are hot indicate that the customers who ordered these items

are getting impatient and it is necessary that we escalade these orders to ease the clients'

frustration

The Production order 195649P-0 is hot. The colors of

the borders on this ticket indicate that this ticket is

coming (blue left border) plus it is getting late to be

processed. We can easily understand why the

customer is frustrated.

How to make a production ticket hot?

Let’s get back to WC5 , we will make the

production order ticket 195484P-0 “hot”

To do this, select the desired ticket and in the

low pane (see fig.45 point 5), click on the Hot

button. The production order is now “hot” and

will require more attention from the operation

manager.

4- Search a Production Ticket

In a production environment , there are several dozens of work orders that are

scheduled at the same time. And finding one production order ticket on the board

could be difficult. For this reason, a lite search engine has been created.

75

Let’s assume that a production line 5 (WC5)

operator is not so sure about the status of ticket #

195635P-0. He wants to confirm that this ticket is

assigned to him.

In order to have the answer about this question,

he will click on the Search button of located on

the top of the form (see fig. 45, point 7) to open

the Search form and enter 195635P. Then click on

the Ok button

The search result shows this production was

rather scheduled on production line #10 (or

WC10)

Kanban board Limitation

The Kanban Board is a powerful tool that displays for each day the production orders that

have been scheduled. But there are some limitations that impend to the nature of the

board itself.

Impossible to display the setup process

The setup process by itself does not add any value to the manufacturing process. It

prepares the work center (machines, tools and operators) to start the production job.

Setup is only useful for the people on the shop floor. Thus because the Kanban is used by

people from more than the production department, we decided not to display the setup

process on the Kanban board.

For these reasons, we have designed and implemented the Gantt chart, which we will

discuss in the next section of this document.

3. Gantt chart

This form is used to display a graphical overview of the current production plan that is

scheduled for a selected work center. You can also use Gantt chart functionality to

manually reschedule the production.

76

This section is the opportunity for us to demonstrate how to use the Gantt chart form.

Working with the Gantt chart form

To open a Gantt chart form go to: Basic > Inquiries > Gantt table > Gantt.

You can refer to the different steps needed to open the Gantt chart form in Part IV

section C-4

Scenario: Working with the Low Density Department

Retrieving a Production order node information

Here we will work with a production order node and describe how to retrieve the most

information about this production order from the Gantt chart from

Note: This case is very specific to our company and it is not available on standard

Dynamics AX 2009 or 2012 R3

Node color: the gray color of the node

indicates a clear plastic film. The color of the node represents the color of the

film that will be produced.

Color details: the complete color details is available in the

legend form. To open the legend form, click on the legend

button

Clr: Clear ; BLK : black ; WHC: White ; REC: Red ; BRN:

Brown …

The length of the node is proportional to the

duration of the job that will be run.

The number within each node represents the

Production order number. Here 195983P and

the status of the production order is Scheduled

Sometimes, there are two nodes linked together.

The first node contains some horizontal stripes.

This is a Setup job node. And the second does

not contain any stripe. This a process job node.

We will use some scenarios to show how this

distinction is helpful during the rescheduling

activity.

Nodes without setup job

Node with setup time job

77

Job Status: A job that has been scheduled will

have during the course of its life different

status. The status are waiting, coming, started,

stop, cancel and end. The status of a job is

indicated by the left hedge of the node.

The figure __ shows the relationship between

the job status and the overall production order

status.

Here the Production order 195983P is coming.

This means that it has been scheduled but not

yet started.

A Job scheduled can be late or on time.

We use the remaining corners of the nodes to

indicate their tardiness status. When the

boarders of the node is red, this means that

the job is late and when green, it is on time.

To display the date and Time of a job just click on the “show

Date and Time” button

Here the Production Order 195893P has

scheduled to run start on 8/6/2014 and 12:23

pm and the estimated date is on 08/08/2014

at 05/08 am.

We can learn from this card that the Setup

process is supposed to start at 12:23 pm and

finish at 12:43 pm.

78

Rescheduling activities

Handling a job rescheduling is a highly activity

To reschedule a production at a future time or to another machine, just select the

production order node and drag it to the desired position.

Here Production 195983P has been scheduled

on the work center 05. We also know that 2

tools have been scheduled as well and these

are the SEPWIND2 and the SSFOLD1.

Rescheduling process will allow the

rescheduling only if the same condition could

be met at the receiving work center.

We will select the Production Order 195983P on line 5 and drag it to line 18. ( see the

screen 1 and Screen 2)

79

Relationship Map between the Job status and the production execution status

The process model diagram shows the relationship between the job status and the

production execution status.

Fig.51: Relationship between Job and Production execution statuses

80

4. ATP form

About the concept of Available-to-promise

Microsoft Dynamics AX calculates the available-to-promise (ATP) quantity based on the

"cumulative ATP with look-ahead" method. The main advantage to this method of

calculating ATP is that it can handle instances when the sum of issues between receipts is

bigger than the latest receipt, that is, when it is necessary to use a quantity from an earlier

receipt to meet a requirement. By including all of the issues until the cumulative quantity

to receive is bigger than the cumulative quantity to issue, the ATP quantity in an earlier

period considers the need to use some of that quantity in a later period.

The ATP quantity is the uncommitted inventory balance in the first period and is normally

calculated for each period in which a receipt is scheduled. The program calculates the

ATP period in days, and calculates the current date as the first date for the ATP quantity.

In the first period, ATP includes on-hand inventory less customer orders that are due and

overdue.

Microsoft Dynamics AX calculates the ATP using the following formula:

ATP = ATP for the previous period + the receipts for the current period - the issues for

the current period - the net issue quantity for each future period until the period when

the sum of receipts for all future periods, up to and including the future period, is greater

than the sum of issues, up to and including the future period.

When there are no more issues or receipts to consider, the ATP quantity for the following

dates is the same as the latest calculated ATP quantity.

If all of the dimensions used for an item are not given when the ATP check is done, they

might still be specified on the issue and receipts. In this case, in the ATP calculation, the

receipts and issues must be aggregated to the existing dimensions, to reduce the number

of receipt and issue lines used in the ATP calculation.

The ATP quantity shown is always > = 0. If the calculation returns a negative ATP quantity

(for example, if a larger quantity than the available quantity has been promised earlier),

the program automatically sets the quantity to 0.

The ATP form

The ATP can be opened using the following links: Accounts receivable > Common Forms

> Sales Order Details –Sales Order Line > Inquiries > ATP Information

Inventory management > Common Forms > Item details.

81

Fig. 52 the ATP (available-to-promise form

Form Description

The form is divided into 3 sections:

82

The Filter section

The filter section is to select the item that we would like to know the ATP about.

Item number: The number of the item.

Quantity: Specify the quantity that you want to check the availability for.

Warehouse: Select the warehouse that you want to include in the ATP calculation.

The Graph section

The graph section shows the available-to-promise trend and the item ordering

The Data Section

This section shows the data of the ATP and the Receipts and issues and on hand with

look-ahead.

5. Production Input Journal

Inventory management > Journals > Item arrival > Production input

The Production input journal is used to register item into the inventory. The items

received can then be reported as finished or unregistered if they were mistakenly

registered.

During the manufacturing process the system registers the finished good items in

inventory every time the operators stretch wrap a pallet.

The item registration process is the final step of the production activity control

6. Route Journal

Route cards

A route card provides an overview of information that comes from route and operation

setups and operation and job scheduling methods. A route card specifies the following

information:

Routes used

Operations involved (names and numbers)

Work centers

Quantities

Setup and process times

Start dates and times

End dates and times

7. Job Journal

Job cards

A job card lists the individual job numbers of a particular operation, one job per page.

The jobs that are included on a job card, and their estimated times, come from the route

83

and operation setup information. From the job card, you can open the Production journal

lines, job card. The people who run work centers can provide feedback on the production

process. There are fields where you can enter consumption statistics and information such

as the error quantity.

D. Purchasing

The Purchasing part of this project will be a later implementation. We will update the

document after the implementation.

Logically, the material consumption will be linked to the purchasing module of Dynamics

AX.

E. Reporting Production Process Control

We have built several reports that will help the planner and other decision makers to take

insightful decision. These reports are graphics reports that show the following KPI

Yearly Production line utilization

Scrap production process control

Scrap/Production ratio process control

Scrap production comparison

Yearly scrap production ratio

1. Yearly Production line utilization (YPLU)

The planners and the higher management can use this graphic to review the extruder

utilization by a production line.

Graph Interpretation

The Yearly Production line utilization graphic below shows that the production line 22 is

heavily used. The YPLU also shows that the production lines 9 and 21 have a very low

usage rate.

Possible decision: This graphic can be used for example for future production line load

balancing insight.

84

Fig 53 Yearly Production line utilization graphic

2. Monthly Scrap report

The Monthly scrap report graphic can be used to visualize the quantity of scrap produced

every month. This monthly scrap report can be refined to show a monthly production

scrap report by production line or by production department.

This graphic also shows trend of the scrap produced from the same period of time on the

previous here and a 3-month moving average of scrap production by department.

Graphic Interpretation

The graphic below shows that the quantity of scrap produced this year is ultimately

higher than the two benchmarks that are the scrap production from the same period in

the previous year and the 3-month moving average of the production of scrap.

Possible decision

The management could decide to assess the state of each production line to understand

why the scrap produced during this year (blue curve) is higher.

85

Fig 54: Monthly Scrap report Graphic

3. Scrap Production process control

This graph can be used to study if the scrap production process is in control. We

understand that any organization should fight the production of scrap. Even if it is not

possible to eliminate the creation of scrap material during the production, it is at least

possible to contain the production of scrap.


The graphic below shows that the scrap production below is not in control and the

management should try to find more about that issue.

Possible Decision

Investigate why the scrap production is not in control.

Fig 55 Scrap Production process control

4. Scrap/Production ratio process control

The Scrap/Production ratio graphic is a report that shows the ratio of scrap produced for

a given production order quantity every month. This visual report also shows the same

ratio for the previous year and the 3-month moving average.

86


The graphic shows that the scrap/production ratio from this year (in blue) has decreased

from last year. The graph also shows that the ratios have been having the same trend 2

years in a row. This could be the sign that at a certain period of the year most likely

starting in May, the number of order increases. So does the quantity of scrap produced

but at a higher pace and the quantity of order placed.

Possible Decision

The management could decide that they will monitor production lines starting in May in

order to decrease the quantity of scrap generated.

Fig.56: Scrap/Production Order Ratio

F. Conclusion

The production scheduling module integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 was a

very exciting journey. Throughout the project, we learned more about the company

requirement planning processes. The production scheduling project was a very

challenging endeavor. The production scheduling module requires input from several

modules within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. And the module outputs are used by the

account receivable and payable modules, the production, warehouse management and

Inventory management modules.

At the heart of the module, there is powerful scheduling engine that do the following

jobs:

Schedule and reschedule requirements

Update the production order route

Manage the job order sequencing and more.

Finally, the production scheduling module has been designed with simple UXs for a rapid

adoption by the end users.