We are in the process of revamping our methods to make certain sub-assemblies non-phantom and non-stock. This allows an individual sub-assembly to be contained within a parent job rather than as its own separate job which was the desire of the company. The BOO on the sub-assembly part would have the work station where the work was completed and they would be responsible for transacting that work. However, we realized that we have quite a few parts that are shared amongst a number of assembly lines and we’re not sure how best to proceed.
For instance, we have product 1 that is completed on assembly line A. A sub-assembly used in product 1 is made in station 4, so we’ll call this operation “Station A4” assigned to the method of this sub-assembly. We also have product 2 that is completed on assembly line B. This same sub-assembly is used in product 2 and is made in station 6, so we’ll call this operation “Station B6”. What would be the best practice to have 2 different operation sequences on two different products?
After some further investigation and discussion with the planning staff, they feel it would be difficult to use alternate methods. It would require the job planner to remember to select the line B alternate method when entering a job for product 2. When we have numerous products, this would be a lot to remember which parts are common and which are not.
Another idea proposed was handling the common parts off the assembly line and actually batching these. This has been mostly rejected by manufacturing.
I’m not sure what our other options are here. The good part of having station specific operations is the ability for the operator to use MES Work Queue, sign into the job and their station and only see what work needs to be performed by them. But that means the same work that is performed on another assembly line for another product will not see this part in their work queue and someone will need to transact this part with another lines operation.
Some thought provoking posts here. I don’t have enough time to think critically about it but I feel like you have already identified two things you could do.
I don’t get the alternate method thing and how it applies to subassemblies. Typically alternate methods are used to define another way to make something of the same fit and function…
If Jason broke down your process accurately with that tasteful cake example, then yeah the cake part would be a part number and you’d make a different part number for each version of frosting?
John, that’s what I couldn’t understand about the problem. What exactly is the user trying to solve here, scheduling, costing, stock vs make direct,etc.?
Yes we use a cellular assembly line and all products are make to order. The overall desire of the company is for better costing and inventory control. A secondary desire was for each cell to be able to see only the work that is specific to them, considering our parent part may have 30+ sub-assemblies and purchased material, each one could be slightly different this build than next. We achieved this desire by making cell specific operations and the resource group matches the operation. But now we’ve encountered the issue where a given sub-assembly may be common among products, still built to the parent job, but built by a different assembly line and cell altogether.
Today, we only do kanban receipt transactions for our fabrication department, and then after that nothing gets transacted until sometimes weeks later when the parent job is finally completed. So we’re implementing transaction points all throughout the process which is brand new to me and the company.
We do this by making all of the operation generic using ASMCTR resource group for all operations and then when the jobs are created I have a bpm that changes ASMCTR to the cell that is going to build it this time.
