Material and Production Logistics

HYDRA-MPL

Transparency of material flow

One crucial requirement for manufacturing companies is to have the right material in the right quantity and quality at the right place and at the right time. It is also very important to have an overview where finished or semi-finished goods are stored and in what quantity. HYDRA Material and Production Logistics (MPL) has been developed specifically to control material flow and monitor material stocks in production.

In contrast to the mostly retrograde material postings used in ERP systems, that only allow posting of resources and finished goods once the entire production order has been completed, HYDRA-MPL works with a higher level of detail - with fewer delays.

Completed items or semi-finished products can be counted during each production step using material buffers or WIP (Work in Process) stocks. Consequently, information about material consumption and produced stocks are much more precise and up-to-date.

Management of Material and Inventories

Within the system, material buffers represent WIP storage locations and other storage locations where resources and semi- finished products can be temporarily stored. As a result,

it is possible to specify the amount of the work in process. From a logistics point of view, they also provide information about when stocks run out and when supplies have to be

ordered. Using relevant shop floor documentation, material buffers can also support Kanban processes.

Material buffers and their related properties, such as minimum or maximum stock limits can be set up within master data management.

Carriers are often required to forward material from one production step to the next. These carriers are managed as transport units that can be set up along with other master data, such as measurements and loading capacity.

Material Monitoring

Stock overview has been designed to provide the responsible employee with a summary of the availability of different materials, the quantity and the location of material buffers or

WIP stocks. Together with material numbers, it is possible to manage material batches (defined units), thereby assigning a batch status like “blocked”, “expired”, “released”, etc.

This constitutes the basis for easy control of material flow as the batch status specifies precisely how to deal with relevant stocks.

Real-time stock overviews are even available if the quantities produced are recorded using the HYDRA machine data

collection module (MDE) or by entering data directly at the machine and the material buffers are created in such a way so as to represent the machine output. A similar function is

also provided for monitoring stock in relation to material that is “stored” in transport units.

The quantities included in material buffers may be monitored efficiently by using the stock monitoring function. Minimum and maximum stock levels can be defined for each material.

HYDRA-MPL uses data fields to define warning and alarm limits allowing alarms and warnings to be forwarded automatically to the responsible employees using escalation

management.

The expiration statistic provides tables and graphs showing materials that have exceeded the expiration date. By inputting a specific period of time, the material quantities that have already expired or will expire are calculated by the selected end date. The warning report lists all material batches for which alerts have been issued.

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