ProfitMaker with Expanded Inventory and Manufacturing contains powerful shop floor control tools. If you have inventory and the need to control how your inventory items are issued to in house customer orders, or, if your purchase lead times are relatively short, knowledge for planning purchases of inventory can help you. Three distinct functions will be described here: the allocations report, material scheduling and work center scheduling.

Allocations Report

The allocations report is a valuable tool which brings all records affecting inventory together on one report. The result is a report which displays projected inventory availability based on a planned series of events including customer orders, purchase orders, and production orders. Using order ship dates as the ultimate priority, it applies planned receipts and shipments to present a suggested scenario. If your lead times are relatively short, you may schedule "just in time" inventory delivery reducing investment and required warehouse space.

The Allocations Report is ideal for expediting purchased goods or planning purchases for "Just in time" items that can be purchased after the order is entered. This option sorts the inventory allocations by item and date, and hypothetically allocates the on hand inventory to the requirements, calculating a projected quantity available figure for each order. The material scheduling option discussed later may be used to select the shippable items or orders and print pick lists for pulling stock to orders.

Material Scheduling

Material scheduling is an interactive process using tools similar to the report above. Intended as a shorter term evaluating tool, an inventory expediter or planner may use the iterative process to develop the inventory pulling plan which assigns current inventory to the most appropriate order. The output is a pick list which has a secondary optional feature of flagging the order as released and moving goods from a storeroom balance to work in process.

Work Center Scheduling

Work Center Scheduling provides displays of labor backlog, allows rescheduling, completion maintenance, and printing of work center schedule reports.

• By using the work center capacity display you may analyze outstanding labor hours by due date and see an accumulated over or under capacity.
• Lower priority jobs may be rescheduled within the day or put on hold.
• You may mark a labor step complete in this step or hold it from schedules.
• You may print work center scheduling reports which can be given to the workers.
• The work center report has blank fields for feedback from the worker.
• This feedback may be used to hold or complete jobs for the next day.

While this email only permits space for a brief overview of what you might need to know about Inventory and Shop Floor Management, there is extensive documentation available online that will walk you through the procedures step-by-step here.