I feel like you could liken just about everything from a pizza restaurant to Epicor.
Parts = PLUs aka the stuff on the menu
Parts = ingredients
Parts have costs, pricing, discounts, lot sizes, different UOMs and conversions, bin locations, maybe even warehouses and sites depending on if you’re a mom and pop or a chain.
You have your list of customers. Sales/Marketing is always trying to attract new customers while retaining the existing ones with a high quality, consistent product.
Orders and jobs are the tickets that go to the line to be made.
Orders can be make direct or pull from stock.
Accordingly, jobs can be make to order, make to stock, or make to job. There are examples of all of these.
Special orders might require updating the job to make it different than the method.
Resources could be the ovens, fryers, and other cooking/prep equipment.
Resources could also be people.
Operations would be the steps required to prep and make all the different food.
Capabilities could be used for different people resources to best schedule the labor.
Forecasting could be used to predict typical ordering patterns based on history.
Methods of Manufacture would be the recipes.
Some pizzas would be configured parts.
Most other things would be make to order (non-stock) parts.
Things that are bought already done might be stockable and sell from stock (Desserts, pre-packaged juice boxes, dipping sauces, etc.) Or it’s not uncommon to prep food to a certain point and put it into stock only to be consumed by a job later in the day.
In what other industry is “just in time” more relevant? You want to buy just what you need because it all has a shelf life and you want to minimize the space required to store things so you can maximize the side of the building that generates revenue. The concepts of safety stock, min, max, kanban, suppliers, lead times, all come into play. Shipment happens either when a server brings the food out, the driver delivers it, or the customer picks it up. Non-conforming parts, DMR, Cases, RMA, Credits, etc.
The more I think about it, the more I can liken my time managing a pizza restaurant to my current responsibilities of trying to optimize our planning/production.
Does anyone else have similar examples/analogies?
Is there more synonymous going on that I didn’t capture?
Am I way off?