Supply chain planning, which comprises the logistical plan of an in-house supply chain, is essential to the success of many of today's manufacturing firms. Most manufacturing firms rely on supply chain planning in some form to ensure the timely delivery of products in response to customer demands. Typically, supply chain planning is hierarchical in nature, extending from distribution and production planning driven by customer orders, to materials and capacity requirements planning, to shop floor scheduling, manufacturing execution, and deployment of products. Supply chain planning ensures the smooth functioning of different aspects of production, from the ready supply of components to meet production demands to the timely transportation of finished goods from the factory to the customer.
A modern supply chain often encompasses a vast array of data. The planning applications that create and dynamically revise plans in the supply chain in response to changing demands and capacity require rapid access to data concerning the flow of materials through the supply chain. The efficient operation of the supply chain depends upon the ability of the various plans to adjust to changes, and the way in which the required data is stored determines the ease with which it can be accessed.
Operations in a production line of a plant for producing a product are carried out at work centers. In supply chain planning tools work centers are represented by business objects that can e.g. represent the following real work centers: machines or machine groups; production lines; assembly work centers; and employees or groups of employees.
Together with bills of material and routings, business objects representing work centers belong to the master data in production planning and control systems. Business objects representing work centers are used in task list operations and work orders. Task lists are for example routings, maintenance task lists, inspection plans and standard networks. Work orders are created for production, quality assurance, plant maintenance and for the project system as networks.
Data in work centers is used for scheduling, costing, capacity planning, and simplifying operation maintenance. For the purpose of scheduling, operating times and formulas are entered in the business object representing the work center, so that the duration of an operation can be calculated. For the purpose of costing, formulas are entered in the business object representing the work center, so that the costs of the operation can be calculated. Usually a business object representing the work center is also assigned to a cost center.
The available capacity and formulas for calculating capacity requirements are entered into the business object representing a work center for capacity planning. Further, various default values for operations can be entered in the business object representing the work center for simplifying operation maintenance.
A business object representing a work center is created for a plant and is identified by a key. The work center category that can be defined in customising, determines which data can be maintained in the business object representing the work center.
Supply chain planning and management tools as the SAP R/3 system use routing. Routing is a description of which operations, e.g. process steps, have to be carried out and in which order to produce a product. In addition to information about the operations and the order in which they are carried out, routing also contains details about the work centers at which they are carried out as well as about the required production resources and tools. Standard values for the execution of individual operations are also saved in routings. Usually a bill of material (BOM) is assigned to routing. Individual components of the BOM are assigned to the routing operations.