Manufacturing extends from design and engineering of unique "once off" products through to repetitive manufacture of standard items, using machinery, labour and / or facilities.

Types of manufacture vary but may include:

• Assembly (combining components to make an end item)
• Machining (making a steel component on a lathe)
• Blending (blending ingredients to produce a usable product)
• Reaction (combining several chemicals and producing a new product via a reaction)

At a detailed level so much is dependent upon the following:

• Ability to combine several sales orders/forecasts into one job
• Maintaining stock of sub-assemblies to ensure short completion times of finished products
• Maintenance of critical machines/equipment to keep the production line moving
• Availability of critical tools and resources
• Quality control at critical points.

Business objectives

Manufacturing business objectives include:

• The creation of a mechanism for estimating product costs and being able to record and control actual manufacturing costs 
• The manufacture of products to a set standard of quality and cost
• The measurement and management of production 
• Using facilities at maximum efficiency
• Balancing the demand for products with the capacity of the factory
• Tracking the progress of items being manufactured and applying priorities to ensure the correct items are made available to customers when needed.

Pitfalls and problems

There are many possible pitfalls and problems in any production environment which can cause inefficiencies, rework and / or scrap, such as:

• Excessive machine down time due to:
         - Complex and time-consuming machine set ups
         - Cleaning out of vats eg for colour changeovers
• Bottlenecked critical work centres with too much demand
• Excessive build-up of work in progress on the factory floor, possibly caused by long waiting times between work centres or incomplete product (eg waiting for a missing component)
• Stock shortages due to incorrect buying, duplicate allocation of the same raw materials or late supplier deliveries
• Lack of sensible scheduling
• Excessive rework and / or scrapping due to poor specifications, poor job monitoring and / or poor quality control at inspection points.

All these problems, in our experience, can be resolved through the use of sound SYSPRO.  If you would like to discuss any of these issues further please contact us.

And - why not subscribe to our free newsletter and see what further insights we can provide to help your business.