Scrap and rework costs are a manufacturing reality impacting organizations across all industries and product lines.

Scrap and rework costs are caused by many things—when the wrong parts are ordered, when engineering changes aren’t effectively communicated or when designs aren’t properly executed on the manufacturing line.

No matter why scrap and rework occurs, its impact on an organization is always the same—wasted time and money. And while no one, especially an operations manager, wants to admit it, these expenses add up quickly and negatively impact the bottom line...

Common sense rules. We may not like them, but generally, they stand the test of time and should be followed. Here are 8 common sense rules related to inventory management published by Inbound Logistics back in 2007. They still hold true today. 

1. If you don' t know where you are going, no road will take you there. Enterprise resource management systems are designed to tell you about today' s inventory. With some work, you can also access information about past inventory. To manage inventory proactively, however, you must know projected inventory levels for the future.

2. Make what you can sell. An integrated Sales and Operations Plan will naturally take into account expected demand in its production plan. Inventory is not an independent variable - it is the direct result of demand and supply.

3. Sell what you can make. Too often, a disconnect exists between sales and marketing desires and the reality of production capabilities.

4. If you can' t sell it, stop making it. If demand for your product does not materialize, you need to identify that gap quickly to avoid a buildup of non-moving inventory. Numerous mechanisms can be put in place to identify such trends.

For tips 5 through 8 and more details into the other tips, click the button below to read the full article.

A serialized item is a physical occurrence of a standard item that is given a unique lifetime serial number. This enables tracking of the individual item throughout its lifetime, for example, through the design, production, testing, installation, and maintenance phases. A serialized item can consist of other serialized components.

In Service, a serialized item can be a customer-specific or owner-specific installation. Installation groups are a group of installations/serialized items such as photocopiers, computers, air conditioners, forklifts, lathe machines, and even aircraft.

A serialized item is identified by both the item code and serial number. You can set up the mask used to generate the serial numbers so the serial number includes some fields of the item data, such as the item group and the manufacturer.

In a multi-company structure, the companies can share the serialized item data. All the service departments in the various companies can refer to the same serialized items.

The serialized item can originate from a sales order or a project. The details of a serialized item indicate their origin, for example, by using specific sets of serial numbers for items that originate from sales orders and from projects. Serialized items can also originate from an as-built structure or directly from the production bill of material in Manufacturing.

In Service...

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