VISUAL NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2004
Libra Signature Accounting products were originally designed
for the Basic Accounting, Distribution, Construction and Property
Management Industries. There are a number of features available however, that
make them a good fit as well in the Light Manufacturing arena. When you compare
the costs of many Manufacturing systems, Libra is often a bargain and is
usually far easier to operate than many of its Manufacturing competitors.
The Bill of Materials feature is one that is often used
in Manufacturing. This program allows you to set up a list of parts that go
into the manufacture of a finished good. When orders are entered the various
component parts can be allocated to determine whether there is sufficient stock
to build the number of finished goods that the customer has ordered.
File inquiry screens display the number of items that
are already assembled, the number that can be assembled and the component parts
that are in short supply if you need to assemble a large number of a certain
product.
There are two principle modes that the Bill of Materials
operates in. In one case customer orders create the demand for production. The
items are produced and shipped from a work order and when they are invoiced the
component parts are removed from inventory. Reports highlight demand for
component parts related to customer orders so that effective scheduling can
fill this demand.
In the other mode, customer orders plus expected demand
generates the production of the finished good. This production is entered via
the Bill of Materials module and it increases the quantity of finished goods
that are on hand, while it decreases the component parts consumed at the same
time. When the product is shipped, the invoicing reduces the quantities of the
finished goods.
In this case, the presence of a finished good with a
negative quantity on hand would indicate that the production of that product
had not been entered otherwise it could not have been shipped. This mode of
operation has advantages when the demand for a product can be fairly accurately
estimated.
Where Used Reporting can be helpful to highlight common components
that may be sourced
elsewhere. Production Forecasting can indicate potential material shortages
that will occur a month or more down the road based on estimated production of
goods.
Once a Bill of Material has been created it can be used
to roll up material and labour costs to accurately compute the actual cost of a
finished product. As individual material costs change, this can be run again as
necessary.
Landed costs such as duty and freight can also be
tracked and allocated to the inventory materials used in the manufacturing
process.
Bar Coding is a useful feature to implement in
Manufacturing Control and Tracking Systems. Bar Coded Shop Orders can be
created and scanned at various stages of the Manufacturing process to track
status of a customer order. In processes that take days or weeks to complete this
can be helpful in answering common questions regarding order status, delivery
dates and such.
Bar codes can be scanned into Libra or any application
as the scanner just converts the bar code into a corresponding text field such
as a part number or order number which could also be keyed in manually.
Once products are ready to ship, preparing bar coded
tags for products can be an excellent value added service. This can aid your
customer’s inventory system and it is becoming a requirement of more and more customers.
If this is a requirement that you can meet, so much the
better.