Traktionssysteme Austria (TSA) is an Austrian company at a location rich in tradition. For 60 years, the former Brown Boveri plant in Wiener Neudorf has been manufacturing traction drives for electrically powered rail and road vehicles for 60 years. Which are in reliable and powerful in use all over the world. In 2020, the 578 employees generated a turnover of around 120.5 million euros. More than 59,300 machines were delivered.
As in all areas of planning, transparency is perhaps the most important prerequisite for efficient and successful work for colleagues who are responsible for the provision of materials.
Be it in purchasing for production or for the organization of supplies: Information not only about required materials, quantities and deadlines, but also about interrelationships and influences is crucial. They make it possible to assess priorities on a daily basis in line with the situation
The right starting point for looking at all currently important conflicts can, depending on the issue, lead to the desired information more quickly. One such starting point is an overview of all current and upcoming projects or customer orders in the plant, in which various types of conflict are calculated and displayed at a rough, summarized level.
Projects that require action are thus quickly identified and can be evaluated by jumping to specific missing parts lists. The tooltip function also provides a quick overview of the affected materials. The basis for the calculation of alarms is the analysis of the complete material flow for a project or order, regardless of whether make-to-order production, or a combination of these are used.
In the specific example for TSA, these overviews are available both as a flat list for each sales order division and structured according to the linked project number and a corresponding conflict summary. The availability checks in these lists have been deliberately reduced to the essential alarms in order to provide a quick overview. In addition to the analysis of purchased parts for parts for production and supplier provisions, this also includes statements on the availability of customer provisions and reports on checks in incoming goods, of which the project and its production stages depend.
A more detailed statement on the availabilities is provided by the actual bill of materials or missing parts list, which can be called up globally for all missing parts in the planning period, for each project, each sub-chain in production and for each individual planned and production order. Depending on whether production has already started, is imminent or is planned for the future, different types of availability check are relevant.
These separately displayed alarms include checking stock availability in the plant or whether all required receipts have already been confirmed by the supplier. Quantities in the quality check or the influence of safety stocks can also be included in the alarms in a differentiated manner, and recognizing shortages can of course only be a first step. Further information is required in order to evaluate such a missing part appropriately. First of all, of course, a statement of how long the delay is already and when the material will be needed. The replenishment time is also taken into account here. Can the requirement still be covered in time by initiating or adjusting the procurement? Or will there be a delay that makes it necessary to reschedule production? In addition, the user is also shown which objects are actually responsible for the coverage.
For example, a requirement may appear in the shortage list because there is no object to cover it or because there is only one purchase requisition that was not converted into a purchase order in time. In addition, there are unconfirmed purchase orders from the supplier which already violate the replenishment lead time.
Last but not least, to get a complete picture of a situation, it is essential to know where the demand is coming from. How many projects are affected? Where are these projects located and how would a delay affect them? Which customers need to be notified in the event of a delay?
But also: Are there perhaps already other delays in the course of the project, so that the originally planned deadlines may no longer be relevant? It is precisely these possibilities of showing correlations that you have in the software with simple clicks.
When it comes to keeping an eye on the availability of materials provided to suppliers, the same information is required that plays a role in purchasing for production. Regardless of whether the materials are procured externally or produced in-house. A missing parts list is therefore also available for these items. The special feature of the evaluation of these requirements is the separate consideration of the MRP areas of the supplier with its provided stock on the one hand and its own plant on the other. Both aspects are relevant when classifying a shortage. If a requirement is not covered by the stock provided by the supplier or planned receipts there, an additional check must be carried out. Is the missing quantity already available in the plant stock? Is there a dependency on planned production or purchases at plant level? Only by considering these areas together can the resulting delay and the forecast availability date be determined.
Orders that include provisions are generally not assigned to a specific project or customer order. This makes it all the more important to have a quick overview of all project numbers indirectly affected by the shortage in this shortage list. Detailed information is also provided here by a jump to the production chains determined by the material flow. This also provides full transparency regarding all correlations and influences for the provisions.
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Martin Kohl
Sales Team Germanedge