In small and medium-sized discrete processing and manufacturing enterprises, digital transformation is a key measure to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance market competitiveness. From the perspective of operational value, this paper introduces in detail the application of light MES system (lightweight manufacturing execution system) in small and medium-sized discrete machining scenarios for your reference.
Introduction to system capabilities and processes
1. Organizational structure
The system supports a variety of organizational structure forms such as flat or tree-like structure, and completes the distribution of rights and responsibilities by setting menu permissions for roles and assigning roles to people. This flexible form does not limit the customer’s organizational structure and personnel allocation. Therefore, it supports special personnel and multiple positions. It is recommended to assign menus according to the company’s business management requirements.
The following is a reference suggestion, using the system to initialize these positions to refer to the business:
The “organizational data” part of the system can be configured by the implementer according to the company’s implementation during the system initialization stage, and the customer is responsible for the configuration after the implementation is completed. Our configuration includes five dimensions: user, organization, role, position, and page authority, which are interrelated and accurately and flexibly manage the scope of authority and responsibility of each employee of the client company.
2. Operating business
Order management process: After signing the sales contract, enter the order in the system, including the basic information of the order and the material information of the products for sale. After the information entry approval is passed, the transfer order will be executed, and the progress can be queried through the report during the production and manufacturing process of the product.
Packing and shipping process: After the order information is entered and approved, the transfer order is executed, and the materials are distinguished according to whether they are in stock, whether they are self-produced, and whether they are purchased, and the information flows to the warehousing, manufacturing and procurement modules respectively. After the transfer operation, the business specialist can enter the packing list, that is, submit a document of what materials are shipped in this batch. After production or procurement is put into storage, the number of boxes that can be packed matches the number of boxes, and the box can be packed and shipped. Different orders from the same customer and the same shipping address can also be combined for shipment, or split order batches for batch shipping.
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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Order reconciliation process: The business specialist can establish a statement according to the dimensions according to the company’s management requirements, and the same customer and the same delivery address can merge or split multiple orders according to the order time, delivery time or material batch to generate a statement. Record the payment collection with the statement as the main body, and record the payment amount and other information in the corresponding statement, that is, the payment collection is completed. Finance can also record invoicing information for customers in the system, and record the invoice amount, invoice number and other information in the corresponding statement, that is, complete the invoicing.
The above behaviors can generally be managed by a business specialist and a finance officer, or the posts can be merged and completed by one person.
In the case of a stable source of customer orders, customers often sign contracts and settle in batches according to the number of manufactured products (such as monthly and quarterly), so that there are differences in the maintenance cycle of contract-related checkout, invoicing and actual manufactured orders. By introducing statements, you can flexibly reconcile, invoic, and collect payments on different cycles, which solves this problem.
3. Financial perspective
The invoicing and payment collection situation reflects the execution progress of the order and the performance of the contract to a certain extent, and the recording of these data in the system makes the order management process transparent, no longer relying on verbal information exchange, and can directly see the execution progress of the order from the system, which is convenient for supervising business exchanges such as reminder and reminder. The accumulated historical data can also provide a reference basis for evaluating the performance credit of customers and suppliers to a certain extent.
4. Production business
According to the order design and production situation: from the order to the order to select the production (if you need to design, you need to issue it in the design module) to reach production, the system will automatically create the work order information transferred from the order, when the technician completes the process preparation and scheduling, the section leader will print out the instruction sheet, and you can enter the production process. In the production process, when the operator completes the process and reports work, the system will capture the report information as the latest work progress, which can be queried from various monitoring dimensions.
In the case of ordering, stocking or mixed production with order-to-order: In addition to the above-mentioned work orders through order transfer, combined with the actual operation of the customer’s factory, the factory director can also decide on the production plan of stocking by himself, and the production plan can be issued as an order, and the same process of process preparation, production scheduling, and production reporting.
5. Process design and drawings
The system supports online BOM disassembly, as well as BOM import and export, and the parts that need to be designed can be disassembled into designed sub-parts in the design module.
The design is allowed to be issued in batches, that is, a part of the design is issued until the final design is completed.
You can upload drawings for each item, and when the file number of the drawing is the same as the material code, you can upload it in batches and automatically match the drawings.
6. Process, process and production scheduling
The system provides the management of the process library, and the technician can maintain the commonly used process library, or with the help of the system, he can select similar processes from the past instruction sheet and history library. When compiling a new material process, you can find the closest process step that has been manufactured in history, and modify it on this basis, which not only reduces the workload, but also reduces the error operation or forgetting step in the case of historical process reference.
7. Operation production and reporting
Workers report work by using mobile phones/PDAs or QR code scanners to scan device codes, employee codes, and instruction single codes. According to the instruction sheet, scan the code once at the beginning of the process, and scan the code again after completing your own process work, and the system takes the time between the two scans as the actual reporting working hours.
When the team leader schedules production, he can view the employee’s monitoring panel, view the current process performed by the employee, as well as the sequence of steps in the process, the delivery time of the material requirements, etc., so that there is no need to go to the workshop to ask the workers about the progress, so that they can understand the production progress and schedule production according to the actual production situation of the factory or deal with special situations.
8. Inter-process outsourcing business
In the system, the outsourcing staff only needs to record the relevant basic information of the outsourcing contract, such as the selection of suppliers, delivery methods, etc., and the information of the material is seamlessly transmitted by scanning the instruction sheet, without human operation.
Outsourcing returns can also be operated by scanning the order without manually entering relevant information. After the outsourcing is issued and before returning, if you need to query whether it is overdue, whether some of it has been returned, and whether all of it has been returned, you can view it at a glance through the report. In addition, the system can make additional reminders for materials that are about to be overdue, and record suppliers who are often overdue, making it easier for customers to screen and manage suppliers.
9. Quality management control
The system provides quality inspection templates, and similar processes and quality inspection standards can be used to reduce the workload of entering quality inspection requirements and reduce the error of re-entry.
The system provides a separate module for quality treatment, which can be entered when defective phenomena are found in the quality inspection, and maintain the defective problems and solutions, and then can be viewed through the report to view the frequency and probability of defects in each dimension, analyze the impact factors, and continuously optimize and reduce the defective product situation.
10. Procurement process
The requisition template and procurement template provided by the system standardize the submission of procurement requirements, and automatically generate requisitions for the transferred materials, which can also reduce the operation errors of the requisitioners and avoid ambiguous descriptions.
The system supports self-configuration of the approval process, which is automatically circulated after the configuration is completed, reducing manual intervention and shortening the approval cycle. Support mobile phone processing of purchase applications and approvals.
Procurement Dashboard: Displays key metrics such as purchase amount, supplier performance, and cost savings in real-time to assist management decision-making.
11. Inventory warehousing
Binding the instruction sheet when manufacturing is in the warehouse, and the outbound order is bound to the outbound order, which improves efficiency by scanning the documents, and the data is synchronized to the system in real time, and the inventory situation and changes can be viewed in the inventory report immediately.
The materials required for production can be directly associated with the picking list to the instruction sheet during process preparation, and the operator gets the picking list at the same time as the instruction sheet to avoid over-collection.
The borrowing of tools is recorded through the system’s collection and return management, and the consumption of materials can be viewed by generating a collection report.
Data dashboard dimensions
1. Operating dashboard
1.1 Key data
Total sales, total sales month-on-month, quotation success rate of the month, quotation success rate month-on-month, number of early warning orders, average delivery cycle, sales trend, customer TOP5, comparison trend of quotation and sales contract value, order delivery risk warning, order payment risk warning.
1.2. Data value
Sales trend and customer TOP5: Quickly identify changes in the contribution of top customers, which is convenient for adjusting resource tilt strategies; Comparison of quotations/contract amounts: Discover changes in market acceptance and revise product pricing strategies in a timely manner.
Lead cycle analysis: Identify production bottlenecks and optimize scheduling plans.
Double early warning mechanism (delivery + payment collection): reduce delivery risks internally, ensure on-time delivery, monitor payment collection in a timely manner externally, and reduce the risk of bad debts.
1.3 Reference Suggestions
Check the dashboard during daily management inspections, you can complete the screening of key indicator changes the day before, and send early warning orders directly to the responsible person to ensure on-time delivery and payment collection.
Quarterly business analysis will report on the fluctuation data of leading customers and the conversion rate of quotations, and review the overall pricing strategy problems and customer loss problems.
1.4 Prototyping Reference Styles
2. Production dashboard
2.1 Key data
Number of staff, number of equipment, today’s scheduling working hours, today’s standard working hours, today’s completed working hours, workload in production, number of work orders in production, average time spent on product production, average time spent on product production, average time spent on product production, early warning, average working hours for preparing processes, process quota and actual time analysis, average time analysis of parts production, heat map of supplier punctuality, processing progress monitoring, production statistics table of today’s employees, quality analysis of work centers, analysis of undesirable phenomena.
2.2. Data Value
- Number of staff/equipment: grasp the scale of production capacity in real time, avoid idle or overloaded operation of manpower/equipment, dynamically adjust the scheduling plan, and balance the production capacity demand in off-peak seasons.
- Today’s scheduling hours/standard working hours: Measure the rationality of the plan.
- Analysis of the average time spent on product production, the average time spent on product production preparation, the average working hours for preparing processes, and the average time spent on parts production: Establish a standard working hour baseline to provide direction for lean improvement.
- Process quota/actual time analysis: Locate the timeout process and produce the “Process Operation Standard Video Library” to improve the standardization of operations.
- Supplier punctuality heat map: Time and vertical comparison measure the on-time rate of supplier outsourcing return to the factory, and screen and optimize the supplier management system.
- Work center quality analysis and defective phenomenon analysis: Statistics on the frequency and dimension of defective products, find out the problems in the production process, and continuously optimize and improve quality.
- Today’s employee production statistics table: view employee production results and supervise employee production processes.
2.3 Reference Suggestions
Check the dashboard during daily management inspections, you can complete the screening of key indicator changes the day before, and send orders directly to the responsible person for production early warning to ensure that production and delivery are completed on time.
Quarterly analysis will use supplier punctuality thermal comparison to eliminate the last 20% of suppliers; A QC team is established for the TOP3 defects of undesirable phenomena.
2.4 Prototyping Reference Styles
3. Procurement and warehousing dashboard
3.1 Key data
Total purchase amount, inventory funds, project occupied material funds, number of active suppliers, procurement contract value statistics by month, supplier contract value TOP5, proportion of procurement category, proportion of inventory category, inventory turnover analysis, list of material inventory.
3.2. Data Value
- Total procurement amount: reflects the overall scale of the enterprise’s supply chain and monitors the proportion trend of procurement costs.
- Number of active suppliers: Assess the risk diversification of the supply chain, establish a mechanism for supplier introduction and elimination, and cultivate a pool of reserve suppliers.
- Monthly statistics on procurement contract amount: identify the cyclical law of procurement and optimize the capital plan.
- Inventory funds: monitor the cost of capital occupation, and take measures to transfer inventory pressure when it is too large.
- Proportion of inventory categories: Identify important materials with high proportion/high value, implement key control, appropriately reduce inventory for conventional materials, and reduce management costs.
- Project occupation funds: prevent inter-project resource crowding.
- Top 5 Supplier Contract Value, On-Time Delivery Rate: Evaluate the comprehensive situation of suppliers, including quality, delivery, cost, service and other multi-dimensional considerations.
3.3 Reference Suggestions
The quarterly procurement and warehousing review meeting analyzes and eliminates the last few suppliers, and appropriately adds the procurement share to the top 3 suppliers. Identify a high proportion of sluggish materials, centrally process transactions, and withdraw funds.
3.4 Prototyping Reference Styles
