Appendix 4: Generating orders

Generating orders directly from Project management

For urgent items, or items with a long lead time purchase orders (PO), work orders (WO), and subcontract orders (EO) can be created before the project structure has been fully defined.

Example 1

For our project, we want to manufacture a machine tool. The engineer is still designing the bill of materials (BOM), but they already know that a specific drive will be required. The drive needs to be purchased in Australia; the shipping time is 6 weeks.

The engineer asks the buyer to create a PO so the drive will be available when needed for the manufacture of the machine tool.

Example 2

We have a project to build and deliver a tower crane (see Appendix 1). We record multiple tasks for each of the major components. One of the material tasks concerns the crane tower. The customer has not yet decided if they need a crane tower that stands at 35 meters or 40 meters high. We know that the crane tower will be at least 35 meters tall.

Before we receive the exact information from the customer to create the material task, we can create a WO to manufacture seven 5-meter tower elements.

If the customer then needs a 40-meter tower, MRP will balance the existing WO for 7 elements against the demand of 8 elements. The replanning rule will suggest increasing the quantity or will suggest an additional WO to produce one additional element.

Prerequisites

The project and project task need to be "launched".

How to record the order directly

Open: Projects > Projects > Project management

From the Project management function (GESPJM), select Enterprise planning in the Action panel (WIPS / Enterprise planning). This action is available at the project level, the budget level, and at the operational (task) level.

You’re now in the Enterprise planning function (FUNGBENCH).
Select Manufacturing from the Actions menu in the Enterprise planning function to plan and create the order.
Enter the demand for the 7 crane tower elements:

Enterprise planning (FUNGBENCH)
Run the MRP processing function (FUNMRPG).

MRP explodes the BOM. The results of the run are displayed in the Enterprise planning function (FUNGBENCH):

Enterprise planning (FUNGBENCH)

The customer informs the project manager that they require a 40-meter tower.

We therefore record, in the Project management function (GESPJM), a material task for the crane tower elements with a quantity of eight 5-meter tower-elements:

Project management (GESPJM)

Rerun the MRP processing function (FUNMRPG).

MRP will regard the "replanning rule". According to the current setting Messages only, we expect MRP to create a new suggestion for a work order for the remaining quantity of 1 unit and as an alternative, a suggestion to increase the quantity of the existing order from 7 to 8. However in this case the orders are related to a project task. MRP therefore acts as if set to Simulation mode and only creates a suggestion to increase the quantity of the existing WO. This ensures that the 1:1 relationship between the project demand and the WO that covers the demand is maintained. The results of the run are displayed in the Enterprise planning function (FUNGBENCH).

In Enterprise Planning now, we find the project-demand MTF and the suggestion to increase the quantity of the previously created WO from 7 to 8:

Enterprise planning (FUNGBENCH)

Generating orders using Multi-level planning (MULTIWOX)

Open: Manufacturing > Planning > Multi-level planning

In the examples in the previous section (Generating orders directly from Project management) we outlined how to create a work order (WO) for a product with a long lead time before we created the material task line using the Manufacturing action in the Enterprise Planning function.

In this example, we only record a single WO for the product; the BOM for the product will be exploded later by MRP.

We can create all the respective WO, PO, and EO for a project task in advance using the Multi-level planning function (MULTIWOX) by entering the project task number. The BOM will be exploded for the entered product and in a subsequent screen, all suggested WO, PO, and EO to be processed will be displayed.

It is not mandatory to create a material task line, however, if it’s created, it’s mandatory that the task is "launched".

Multi-level planning (MULTIWOX)

After the BOM has been exploded, we can decide which orders we want to create.