Operational Quality Processes

¶ … Control Processes in Manufacturing If you were the manufacturing manager for a company that manufactures travel luggage, how would you describe the concept of "explosion" and what would you include in your description? When a material is allocated to a bill of material (BOM), to a sales order BOM, or when a WBS BOM is allocated to an activity, each BOM can be exploded in the network level-by-level or completely, which is called multi-level explosion (Swamidass, 2000).

The reasons for exploding a bill of material include: 1) A desire to maintain subordinate components in the BOM; 2) although the header material was not planned using MRP, it is desirable to trigger MRP for subordinate components; and 3) it is desirable to change the structure of the bill of material as it is presently configured in the network (Swamidass, 2000).

If the allocation of the material component to the activity occurred before the BOM explosion, the following choices are available: 1) Select the component and proceed, which assigns the header material to an item category (which in SAP is indicated by "T" for text item) -- this action means no requirements are generated for that item, but will be for subordinate items; 2) Enter the component manually in the dialog box at a later time, which will cause the component to be allocated to the network under the original item category -- which leaves the option of deleting the component or defining it as an assembly item by assigning a negative requirements quantity ("SAP," 2015).

The explosion mode of costing shows the affect of the levels of a BOM on the cost calculations. Several explosion modes exist, including the following: Multilevel, make to order, according to BOM line type, and single level (Swamidass, 2000). The multilevel explosion option is complex as it requires a comprehensive recalculation of each sub-BOM instead of taking the current cost (Swamidass, 2000).

A version of the multilevel explosion mode is referred to as "made to order" and it is basically a recalculation that amortizes the constant costs according to the specified quantity (Swamidass, 2000). The calculation that is most closely linked to the BOM line type is called "according to BOM line type" such that, the current cost is taken for "item" types and the cost is calculated for "production" types (Swamidass, 2000).

Finally, the single level is a standard costing version that only affects a single level, which fosters consistent, accurate costing with the calculated costs of the first-level manufactured components applied (Swamidass, 2000). B. The best-known approach to capacity management issue is input/output control. In your own words, describe this approach. Input / output control is a technique used to manage production by monitoring the planned and actual inputs and outputs of a work center.

The capacity requirements that are planned and approved by management serve as the basis for the planned inputs and outputs of each work.