Manufacturing

The Manufacturing module has three tabs: Work orders, Bills of material and Material plan.

Bills of material (BOM)

A BOM is the recipe for a finished good: its components and quantities per unit, the scrap percentage, and the conversion cost per unit (labour and factory overhead). Click Create or Edit on a finished good in the Bills of material tab.

Work orders

1. New work order: choose the product, quantity, production line, start date and due date. The status is Planned.
2. Release: the work order is ready to be worked on.
3. Report output: enter the number of good units finished. You can report in stages. Each report:
   • takes the components out of stock according to the BOM at average cost (Dr Work in Progress / Cr Inventory),
   • puts the finished goods into stock at material cost plus conversion cost (Dr Inventory / Cr Work in Progress / Cr Applied Production Overhead). The work in progress balance returns to zero after every report. When the reported quantity reaches the target, the work order is Completed.
4. Close order closes a work order that has produced part of its quantity; Cancel order cancels a work order that has produced nothing yet.

If even one component is short, nothing is posted and Air-M lists every shortage ("Not enough material: ..."). Buy or receive the materials first, then report again. The message "Release work order ... before reporting output" means the work order is still Planned.

Material plan

The material needs of all open work orders, compared with stock and orders already on the way. Short materials are marked Short with their value. Click Buy to create purchase orders for the shortfall straight away.