Bill of Materials
When it comes to some of the more advanced features of Fusion Operations, one of the key things you can do is ensure you have an accurate inventory control. To do this you will want to create Bills of Materials or BOMs. This feature allow you to set consumptions of raw materials and intermediary products, so that they are recorded in an automated manner.
To set a consumption, go to the product from the Products page, and select its code or 'Edit' to open. Towards the bottom of this page switch to the Materials/Sub Products tab, and select +Add Component.
A number of fields will be displayed which you must complete:
The Product, which will be the raw material or intermediary product consumed in the production of the product being edited.
Quantity consumed per unit produced of this product.
The Operation in which the consumption takes place. If no operation is selected the consumption will be set as occurring during the first operation.
You can also choose to set the consumption as a Fixed Quantity, meaning regardless of the quantity that is produced the amount of products consumed will be constant. After filling out this information you can add additional components if needed.
You can get a higher level view of the consumptions by selecting 'Show All BOM Levels', which will display any other products which are first consumed by the product used here. You can also view an inverse BOM by selecting 'Products that Consume “Your Products Name”'.
Once you have defined your consumptions select Save Product. These consumptions will then be displayed on the mobile app during checkout of an operation, and the quantities can be adjusted if needed at this stage.
As well as setting the BOMs up manually in this way you can import a list of BOMs. This list will need to be in the correct format. You can get a template for this by going to the Products page, selecting Import in the top right, and then Import BOM.
Here you can download the template in Excel or CSV form. Once you have this list ready select 'Choose File', then Start to Send to upload. If you need help with this process, check out this article.
Material Requirements Planning
Another useful tool around material management is Material Requirements Planning, or MRP.
MRP has the main objective of showing the supply and demand for a given date interval, for the different products. It allows you to see not only the different material needs, to be produced or purchased, but also the expected stock on each date.
Access the Material Requirements page from within Scheduling in the side menu.
In here you will see a table displayed, with a row for each product, and a column for each day from today.
The boxes displayed contain the following information:
In Stock, which is the stock at the start of time interval,
Supply, which is the amount being produced by productions orders or received via purchase orders,
Demand, the quantity requested via your orders from clients,
Internal Demand, the demand generated from your own production orders, taking into account the BoM of the products listed for production.
Need/Excess, which is the stock at the end of the day or week that will be transferred to the “In Stock” value for the following day or week.
If this value is positive it will be displayed in green, and if negative displayed in red. If a field is in red you can select it and create a Purchase Order to meet this need.
You can filter the MRP table in a couple of different ways. In the top left you can select table filters to choose the set of products that should be displayed on the table below. These can be filtered by a specific set of sales order or products, among others.
In the top right you can select MRP Data, to select the set of orders that should be considered to calculate the values on the MRP display. You can also select whether is presented by day, week or month.
After changing any of this settings from either a table filter or MRP Data menus you must then CALCULATE MRP to apply this settings and refresh the values.
Once you have finished setting up your MRP you can download an Excel Export of the data, by selecting the option from the top right of the table.
Now that you've finished your MRP, Fusion Operations also has a set of Inventory Management features to get visibility and insights into your stock.