Typically, the company must review all scheduled receipts, both production orders and purchase orders, to verify quantity and timing.Then, establish good order close-out procedures to keep residual garbage from building up in the scheduled receipt files.
In some companies, however, the production orders can represent a real challenge. Typically, these are companies with higher speeds and volumes. In this kind of environment, it’s not unusual for one order to catch up with an earlier order for the same item. Scrap reporting can also be a problem. Reported production may be applied against the wrong production order.
Here’s what we call A Tale of Two Companies (with apologies to Charles Dickens). In a certain midwestern city, on the same street, two companies operated ERP quite successfully. That’s where the similarity ends. One, company M, made machine tools. Company M’s products were very complex, and the manufacturing processes were low volume and low speed. The people in this company had to work very hard to get their on-hand balances accurate because of the enormous number of parts in their stockrooms. They had far less of a challenge to get shop order accuracy because of the low volumes and low speeds.
Their neighbor, company E, made electrical connectors. The product contained far fewer parts than a machine tool. Fewer parts in stock means an easier job in getting accurate on-hand balances. These connectors, however, were made in high volume at high speeds. Company E’s people had to work far harder at getting accurate production order data. They had to apply proportionately more of their resources to the shop order accuracy, unlike company M.