Each assembly has several steps required to complete production.  Each step may be responsible for placing specific components, yet many systems do not offer an easy way to identify and pull parts for each step.

Some of the most common methods for handling a situation like this are:

1. Pull parts for all work centers together - This is the easiest way to create a Bill of Material and pull parts for production.  However, it increases the likelihood of lost parts in production.  It makes it difficult or impossible to offset delivery dates for components needed in each work center.  It also makes it difficult to find components in the totes.  However, it may work well for small assemblies (few items on the BoM) or assemblies with few assembly steps.

2. Creating separate Bills of Material for each work center - This method makes it easy to see which components are required for each work center.  It also makes it easy to adjust the material stream to control cash flow.  However, it also creates excessive work orders to process each work center, and makes it more difficult to tie all work centers to the full assembly (users can overcome this shortfall by making the separate BoMs sub assemblies to the top assembly).

3. Changing the item numbers to indicate the work center - This allows users to see which parts belong in each work center.  It requires users to manually control the item numbers, and pull parts by item number.  This also is not an efficient method for control the material stream to help cash flow.

4. Creating inventory locations for each work center - This method breaks inventory into several smaller locations.  Rather than a central inventory containing all parts, each work center has a mini-inventory containing all parts placed in that work center.  This eliminates the need to pull parts for each work center and makes each work center responsible for the parts.  However, it may require more floor space and may make it more difficult to track overall inventory.  (a variation on this method is to have parts in a central inventory and then create a select few production inventory locations to handle and store the high volume common parts).

5. Using system fields to tie parts to each work center - If the system has a field for indicating the work center or the user can define a field for this purpose, this is the most flexible method.  It allows users to indicate the consuming work center, kit by work center, and offset the material stream for each work center. 

ManEx has standard fields and reports to make kitting by work center as easy as possible. Users of ManEx are also able to utilize any of the methods described in the business solution.

For assemblies with few parts and/or production steps, it is can be more efficient to leave all components in the material staging work center.  Fortunately, this can be updated at any time as required.

Kitting and production typically benefit by identifying consuming work centers on more complex assemblies and processes.  Each component on a Bill of Material can be assigned to the consuming work center. Then, kitting can pull parts for each work center.  Each production department is also able to see all parts required for their work center as well as the entire BoM.  This reduces the clutter in production and the risk of misplaced parts.  This also makes it easier for production to return unused components to the stock room upon completion of each step in the process.

Components used in more than one work center can be separated on the Bill of Material to indicate which locations and quantities are required for each work center.  This enhances control over the disposition of the material.

Case Solution

NE Company started kitting by work center.  They tied all components most assemblies to the consuming work center.  They also adjusted the production offset for later work centers to get closer to a JIT material stream.

Although they have not eliminated production attrition, they have been able to reduce it significantly and increase responsibility.