Tooling Management

 

Overview

In manufacturing environments, tools are issued and used on Work Orders and then returned to inventory when the Work Order or operation is complete. Some shops also manufacture their own tools, so tools themselves must be able to be enigneered and manufactured or purchased the same as any other Item in the system.

Within xTuple there is an Item Type specifically designed for tooling Items. Tooling Items can be included on Bills of Materials, and they may also be engineered and manufactured using their own Bills of Materials and Bills of Operations. Tooling Items have unique netting behavior so that when they are included on a Planned Order or Work Order they show up as both demand requirements like other materials, and as supply due at the Work Order due date. Finally, because tooling falls into a grey area of being both a material and a capacity constraint, tools are included in the capacity reporting available in commercial editions. 

Terms and Definitions

    Fixed Quantity

    • Used on Bill of Material and Work Order material Items to specify a "flat" quantity of material required that is independent of the total quantity produced on a batch or Work Order.

    Tooling Item

    • A material resource used in the manufacturing process that is returned upon completion of a Work Order--for example, a reusable mold, apparatus, fixture, or tool. It may be included on a Bill of Materials for an Item, usually specifying a fixed quantity. Tooling Items can be purchased or manufactured. A manufactured tool can have a BOO, a BOM, and a Work Order.  As with other material Items, tools can be tracked as serialized Items.

Bills of Materials

Users can create Bills of Material for Tooling Item types, as they can with any other Item type. Batch size becomes an essential element for cost calculations on Items that have fixed quantities. This quantity will be requiered to be a number greater than or equal to zero to prevent division by zero errors when performing cost calculations.

Bill of Material Items

Bill of Materials allow users to add tooling and reference Items as Bill of Material Items. Because these types of Items are not typically required to be proportional to the quantity being produced, a "Fixed Qty" field allows specifying a flat rate quantity required for a Work Order, as pictured:

Fixed Quantity Tooling Item on BOM

For tooling and reference Items the fixed quantity will default to one and the Qty. Per and Scrap Qty. will default to zero. Regular Items default to fixed quantity of zero, Qty per of one, and scrap of zero. An Item type column on the Bill of Materials screen makes it easy to distinguish between Tooling and other types of items when looking at the BOM header. Fixed Quantity is also viewable as a column on the BOM header.

When costing Bills of Materials by fixed quantity (for non Tooling and Reference items), the fixed quantity will be divided by the batch size specified on the BOM header so that cost for the fixed quantity will be proportional to a real world case scenario.

Work Order Material Items

The Work Order Material Requirement window also allows users to enter a fixed quantity. The default rules for quantity are he same as the Bill of Materials.

Reporting

Generally all reports that use netting calculations consider fixed quantity. In addition several creens and reports listed below include tooling in netting, as both demand and supply:

  • Inventory Availability
  • Inventory Buffer Status
  • Item
  • Item Availability Workbench
  • MPS Detail
  • MRP Detail
  • Pending Availability
  • Reorder Exceptions By Planner Code
  • Return Authorization Item
  • Running Availability
  • Substitute Availability By Item
  • Sales Order Item
  • Transfer Order Item

Capacity Planning

In order to provide for visibility of tooling for capacity planning, the system provides the ability to define capacity information at the Item Site level that mirrors capacity data inputs for the Work Center on a scheduling tab. This "Schedule" tab will only be enabled for tooling items, and only available on the manufacturing edition of xTuple.

Schedule Tab for Tooling Item Site

Because tooling is intimately related to Work Centers in resource planning, it is likely engineers will want to see tools and other materials on the Bill of Operations Item window.  For this reason, a tab for materials appears on the Bill of Operations Item window listing all materials associated with the BOO item--with tooling Items appearing in orange type for special emphasis.  Users can add, edit, and expire materials from the BOO Item sreen. Additionally, they cab associate materials that already exist on the BOM with the operation via ATTACH and DETACH buttons. 

Reporting

The following Manufacturing Edition capacity reports include checkbox options to show capacity for work centers and/or tooling:

  • Time Phased Capacity
  • Time Phased Load
  • Time Phased Available Capacity
  • Rough Cut Capacity
  • Time Phased Rough Cut Capacity
  • Capacity Buffer Status