Material handling, continued

Last month the topic was the receiving of materials into the plant. This month lets discuss the movement and placement of those materials into production.  It now becomes a matter of how to interface the materials to the production orders.  Some comments on the process follow:

1- Job order comes in…
Are the materials staged?
Do we allow for scrape start-up and shut down, less than 100% run?

2- What is the monitoring for the materials?
 Lot numbers.
 Box or bag numbers?
 Type/grade/ in-house numbers/grades
 Color/ pre-color

3- Do the materials need processing steps prior to molding.
 Mix:
 Regrind - what percentage
 Color - let down ratio/ type
Dry:
 Which dryer / location
 Temperature / time

When staging the material is the entire job staged or just the shift?  What is meant is how much material is pulled from the warehouse? On small runs, it is quit possible to have a bag and it runs the job. When it is 20,000 pounds of materials how is it handled. The important part is the handling of the material and documenting. The taking of the material from the warehouse for production, the material now is not available for further use. Depending on the MRP system this may be taken care of automatically, but if a system is not in place how is it handled? The amount that is allocated to the job, does this include the waste that is generated? Purging from start up, shutdowns, short shots or bad parts.  It is not uncommon to blame the material handler on first shift at midnight because you ran out of the material.
The reason for all this being that no one took into consideration bad parts, startup and shutdowns and other gremlins that eat material. The end result being that you either ship short on parts or let the press sit idle for four to five hours as you mix and than dry material to finished the needed parts. The most important thing is how are the materials allocated to the job. Is this done via what is supposed to be used or what is actually used?  From the costing point of view and even quoting this is extremely important.

Are the materials monitored as we put them into the system? By this, are we recording the lots numbers or internal numbers?  This may be a requirement for the OEM or not but it is good practice since there are the occasional times that one lot may out perform another for some reason.
 

Thanks for the time, to be continued.

Steven L Silvey
Sr. Technical Service
General Polymers Division
Ashland Distribution