MANAGEMENT OF SUPPLY PROCESS
Demand
Demand from the OEM is typically received in the form of a medium term forecast (nine to ten months), a short term production plan (five to ten days), and call-off signals (JIT-Signals) as individual motor vehicles pass through trigger points on the production line (from this point in time the supplier typically has between one and two hours to pick components, assemble the part and deliver the product to the appropriate process on the production line).
T2T provides for the utilities to import the various types of demand, to analyse the demand and to plan according to the OEM's demand, and to react timeously on individual part call offs.
T2T has various settings to level forecasted demand to the Customer's OEM's) maximum daily production ability. T2T's facility to analyse previous to date demand and supply variation, substantiate recoverable expediting cost from responsible party. (i.e. OEM demand variance, supplier non-performance and incorrect stock supply from freight forwarding agent). Demand verification in respect of end item consistency (e.g. Left/Right, Front/Rear by derivative) is facilitated by T2T.
Real time analysis of previous to date trends is supported in user-friendly interfaces, incorporating the graphical representation of the data. Event driven notification of invalid/inconsistency in forecasts, production plans and call offs is therefore exposed to the tier one and tier two suppliers.
Internal Operations
Inventory and the internal operations are managed by means of integrated mobile scanning devices (operating on a radio frequency network) and serial scanning devices. This allows for real time product tracking throughout the production process and in the warehouses, ensuring hundred percent accurate and real time inventory data.
The internal operations are also simplified by the utilization of custom user interfaces, for example the shipment of a part can be performed by scanning a single bar code on a label that is affixed to the particular assembled part. In addition, work instructions are generated and printed automatically in the form of user-defined labels, with the unique identifiers appearing as bar codes to enable real time scanner tracking.
The stock take/cycle counting process facilitates the real time counting of stock (by means of mobile scanning devices) – manual counting is also permitted, and also allows for the rapid conclusion of stock take results (automated stock adjustments as per authorised user decision).
A detailed audit trail of the stock counted/scanned as well as the subsequent conclusion of the results is available (up to end user/part number level).
Supply
The T2T MRP (material requirements planning) engine uses the demand, existing inventory, planned replenishments and the MRP configuration settings to manage the supply of purchased and manufactured parts. The purchase order schedule functionality allows the user to track the progress of a purchase order from release of the order, until the goods are received into stock.
T2T offers levelling of lower bill of material level supply. The supply of components that are used in more than one lower level bill of material may be
levelled to the max combined consumption of top end products governed by the Customer's max daily capacity. It will still order sufficient stock for any product combination called on the forecast.
Extended Supply Chain Management
T2T's supply chain objective is to make every contributor in the supply chain an active participant and to vest data ownership in supply chain participants.
The latter will result in data integrity via single point data capturing and no data redundancy within the order fulfilment lifecycle Personalised views and templates for every supply chain event are available to each participant in the supply chain. With T2T's flexible and transparent order fulfilment tracking, operator intervention is only needed by exception and swift response to the dynamic demand variation is possible, by expediting the appropriate activity within the supply chain.
It is thus possible to prevent inventory shortages, minimize transportation cost and minimize plant stock.
Real-time Product Tracking
Another T2T main advantage is real-time product tracking. Product tracking is done by means of radio frequency (mobile) and serial scanners. Each transaction performed by a scanner is directly processed on the database.
Typical scanner enabled stock movements includeGoods Receiving
- Stock Transfer
- Stores Issue to Production
- Issue of Floor Stock
- Shipment of Goods and
- Stock Take
