×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Getting the design to purchasing / production

Getting the design to purchasing / production

Getting the design to purchasing / production

(OP)
So, Everywhere I've worked, there has been a lot of effort in getting the design to purchasing/manufacturing. One place, we hand a guy a stack of drawings, and he figures out which parts are made, and which are purchased. (distinguished by the first two digits of the part number) Here, we engineers copy the BOMs from the drawings, and separate it up into fabbed parts, and purchased parts in an Excel spreadsheet, and it multliplies it times however many items we're building. Then he colaborates it with the drawings. Sometimes a typo will throw things off, and we end up with too many parts, or not enough. It's also not very efficient.
Looking for ideas and tips on how to do this as efficiently as possible, and without the chance of mistakes.
I'm not seeing PDMWorks, or any add-ons helping with this particular aspect of things.

David

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

You need an ERP or MRP system for the business software. It should run everything including inventory, purchasing, orders, shipping, cash flow, labor - everything. The product BOM should be entered into this system with the parts indicated for purchase or in-house manufacture.

Put some research into ERP/MRP. There are systems out there even for small firms.

- - -Updraft

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

Your Planners and Purchasers should be the ones determining which are purchased or made parts. Engineering should only be concerned about the parts meeting specifications.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of these Forums?

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

Yeess... but no...

DFM is especially important to optimize qualit and cost of parts amde in-house. The sooner this decision is made, the better.

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

The best way to avoid mistakes is to remove human involvement.

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

No matter how "automated" this process is, it still comes down to painstaking attention to detail. An automated process is only as good as its inputs (GIGO), inputs which also require close attention.

Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots said it best: "Making a list and checking it twice."

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

I agree with the others.
Leaving purchasing to only purchasing, and not involved with engineering details, will help.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Getting the design to purchasing / production

The way we do it is to have a unit of measure property in the BOM, EA, FT, SF, we then have a property of the calculated amount of material. so for EA, we know these are purchased parts and it is the QTY used in the assemble. For pipe and bar that comes in sticks we calculate how many feet are in each part and multiply it times the number of parts. For plate and other items that comes in sheets we calculate the squarfootage (if that's a word) times the number so to keep track of how much plate. it works well for us to send to purchasing so they know what comes from where. for parts that we could build in house but want to buy them out we make a custom part number and apply and EA Qty to them. Hope it helps

Michael McMillan
http://cadtechie.blogspot.com/

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources