Dear All
My Client is a Rice Processing Company, what it does is purchase raw rice from market, process it and then export it. The Manufacturing process is as follow:
- Operation 1 Cleaning (Performed on cleaning section of Plant which has four machines all work together)
- Operation 2 Polishing (Performed on polishing section of Plant which has four machines, in some cases two machine1 and machine 2 is operated and in some cases machine 3 and machine 4 is operated whereas at times all four works together)
- Operation 3 Sorting (Performed on sorting section of Plant which has two machines, both works together)
- Operation 4 Grading 1 (Performed on 1st grading section of Plant which has four machines, all works together)
- Operation 5 Grading 2 (Performed on 2nd grading section of Plant which two four machines, both works together)
- Operation 6 Grading 3 (Performed on 3rd grading section of Plant which two three machines, all works together)
- Operation 7 Packing (Performed on packing section of Plant which one machine)
The capacity of whole plant in which all the machines works together is 5 Ton per hour and all machines starts together, i.e. all the operations are simultaneous.
In Microsoft Dynamics AX-2009 this can be achieved by defining secondary operations of one primary operation but it has a limitation that one operation can have only five secondary operations.
What should be done in this case? Please help!!
Thanks in advance
Rgds
Haroon
Why do you need to split it into 7 operations? It is one continuous flow, you will not be reporting by operation, you will not see staged reporting or analysis by operation. Your capacity is 5 ton an hour for all machines. Why not have one step in the routing with one operation and one resource - the plant. It then does what you require, much simpler, and gives you the same reporting as any other method.
Thanks for your quick reply. I need to split into 7 operations because my client wants machine wise efficiency as I have mentioned there is a possibility in polishing section that in some cases only two polishing machines (1 & 3 or 2 & 4) operate. In that case efficiency of individual polisher should be maintained separately.
Rgds
Apologies missed that bit.
However that is the only machine efficiency that can be monitored - everything else is a continuous flow - if operation 3 stops so does operation 4 so machine efficiency beyond operation 2 is not meaningful, so why not combine these operations?
Sorry did not get you. Could you please explain me with an example.
Rgds
Haroon
- Operation 1 Cleaning (Performed on cleaning section of Plant which has four machines all work together)
- Operation 2 Polishing (Performed on polishing section of Plant which has four machines, in some cases two machine1 and machine 2 is operated and in some cases machine 3 and machine 4 is operated whereas at times all four works together)
- Operation 3 Sorting/Grading(Performed on sorting/grading section of Plant which has two/four machines, all work together)
- Operation 4 Packing (Performed on packing section of Plant which one machine)
Due to the process nature where you have a section where you have x machines and you use x machines any efficiency impacts on later machines reliance on the ones feeding the process. You are never going to report at this level, the only efficiency reporting you want is at polishing with a choice of machines, so create the routing to reflect the process and limitations. Above is an example - obviously not knowing the customer I am making open suggestions, but this gets you around the secondary operation limitation withhout, seemingly, any repercussions.
Dear Adam
Thank you so much for taking interest and helping me out.
Let me clear myself, see there are following sections (each perform a particular operation) in one plant as follow:
• Cleaning (Cleans rice)
• Polishing (Polish rice)
• Grading 7MM (Filter grain which is longer then or equals to 7mm in length)
• Grading 4.5MM (Filter grain which is longer then or equals to 4.5mm in length)
• Grading 5MM (Filter grain which is longer then or equals to 5mm in length)
• Sorting (sorts bad color rice)
• Packing (Pack rice into bags)
In each Section there are number of machines installed; now if I want to process one quality of rice then it will pass through sections in following manner:
• Cleaning (must for all rice qualities)
• Polishing (If I require single polish then only two machines will be operated out of four, and if double polish is required then all four machines will be used)
• Grading 7MM (If the particular rice quality have grains above 7MM then this section will be operated, otherwise this whole section will not operate)
• Grading 4.5MM (must for all rice quality)
• Grading 6.5MM (must for all rice quality)
• Grading 5.2MM (If the particular rice quality have grains above 5.2MM then this section will be operated, otherwise this whole section will not operate)
• Sorting (must for all rice quality)
• Packing (must for all rice quality)
NOTE: The above structure is for one processing plant, there are three more plants with different possibilities of being operated
Hope I have cleared myself
Thank you once again for taking interest in replying me.
It may pass through all of the sections, that does not mean you have to replicate all of the sections in AX - in fact there is little benefit in this structure as it is a continuous processing flow.
Once again, thanks for your reply. The problem is that if I do not replicate all the sections in AX then I may not be able to get performance of each machine which is required for maintenance purpose.
But the machines are not independent - the performance of all the subsequent machines rely on the previous machine - if the process flow stops, so do they, therefore the performance monitoring of the machines at this individual level is not relevant.
You other alternative is to split them out as individual operations and back calculate the capacity to each step. In reality if you want the performance and efficiency at each step you need to know the capacity of each machine as an individual. You cannot have an overall figure and want the the detail if you see what I mean.
Third choice is to modify the secondary operations - no idea of the impact, but I would not recommend it.
Dear Adam
I and Haroon are working together on this
Thanks a lot for your precious time, the problem is solved Route Network Worked for us, we were confused in Route Network & Primary / Secondary operations and thought that they are same, but now we understand that they are two different functions!!
Actually we want to keep this break up of machines in system because the defined structure is for on plant only there are three more plants and there working is different than this plant and the challenge was that in some conditions a whole section might operate and the other may not and this applies to individual machines as well.
Thank you once again for your valuable time.
Regards
Muhammad Saad
Hi Muhammad
Yes the splitting of operations would obviously work - the complexity of the original question with the capacity set on the production line that secondary made sense, however as I suggested, individual operations would work, and I am glad it does for you.
Always happy to help and thanks for the feedback.