Description

The Design Engineering (DE) application is the foundation of the entire MAC-PAC system.  It is always the first application installed.  DE stores and maintains information about all items that your business sells, produces, and buys.  The following information related to items is maintained within Design Engineering.

Part Master File Data.  This data includes information, such as part number and description, that identifies the item.  It also includes information about the item's properties that control how it is treated by other applications.  For example, Design Engineering stores the lead time needed to manufacture or purchase each item.  The Requirements Planning application uses this lead time to determine when production should be started or when a purchase requisition should be placed to meet projected needs for the item.  Additional fields are available on the file so you can define your own part data.

You can define the same part in more than one plant.  Because each plant could use the same item differently, a separate Part Master record is created for each plant.  A Plant field differentiates the records.  The Plant field is displayed in the upper left corner of screens and printed on the upper right corner of reports.  Although you need to create a separate Part Master record for each plant, the Copy Part Maintenance conversation makes it easy to copy records from one plant to another.

Part Comments.  Up to 99 lines of text can be stored within Design Engineering for each part.  Note that documentation related to parts and manufacturing operations can be tracked using the Bill of Documents application.

Part Costs.  An unlimited number of cost elements may be defined for each part.  The cost elements define the detailed breakdown of the total cost of procuring a part.  These cost elements may be designated as material, labor, or overhead costs, and may be categorized as acquisition costs (costs paid to a vendor) or as add-on charges  (freight, handling, material, overhead, etc.).  The total costs and associated detail for manufactured parts are calculated automatically by the cost generation function in the Product Costing module.

Product Structures.  Design Engineering maintains bill of material specifications for all manufactured parts.  On the Part Master File, you define the standard batch quantity used for producing each manufactured item.  The batch quantity defaults to one, providing traditional, unit-for-unit control over discrete manufacturing processes.  On the Product Structure File, you define the quantity of each component required to produce one batch of the item.  You also define the scrap (as a quantity or a percentage) that is expected, and should be planned for, at each level in the product structure.  You can also define a yield factor (on the Part Master File) that is used to calculate the expected yields of manufacturing orders (in discrete environments) and flow schedules (in flow-based environments).  A mass change conversation allows you to replace one component with another on all relevant product structures and/or modify the amount of  the component that is used to make its parents.

Engineering Change and Revision-Level Information.  This data helps you control how and when engineering changes are put into production.  The Engineering Change Order File stores a description of each engineering change by change order number.  The Revision Level File allows you to define and track the various versions of an item's design.  For more information, see the Engineering Control/Revision Level Processing key concept.

Although Design Engineering maintains a great deal of information about what items your business uses and what components are required to make each manufactured or build-thru part, it does not specify what manufacturing steps are used in producing those parts.  Production steps are defined in the Manufacturing Engineering application.

In addition to storing information related to individual items, Design Engineering also maintains information about how your business is organized.  In general, this information must be defined before parts are defined because it is used during part definition.  The following information is maintained.

Plant and Warehouse Descriptions.  Within MAC-PAC, a plant is defined as a single manufacturing facility, including all procurement and distribution activities related to the manufacturing process.  Each plant may be made up of several warehouses--one manufacturing warehouse and multiple distribution warehouses.  Manufacturing warehouses use standard costing; distribution warehouse use moving average costing or standard costing.  Items, product structures, engineering change orders, and revision levels are defined separately for each plant.  Each warehouse can have a separate work day calendar.

Related Items.  Related items can be defined for a given part.  Two types of related items have been pre-defined —complementary items and substitute items.  When you order an item, the order processing user may be able to suggest other items that you may want to purchase which are complementary to the original item ordered.  This would be a complementary relationship.  When you order an item that is backordered and you cannot wait to receive it, the order processing user may be able to suggest a substitute item to be purchased instead.  This would be a substitute relationship.  Additional relationship types can be defined on Reference File category G91.

The related items are displayed in a pop-up window when invoked from the Sales Order or Quote Order Maintenance conversation.  This window will display the list of related items, the related item descriptions, as well as the available quantity for each item and the base price.  Only those related items that exist on the Warehouse Balance File for the company/warehouse being processed are displayed.  For more information, see the Key Concepts and Procedures section of this manual.

Definitions of Inventory Locations.  Inventory locations are areas within a warehouse, such as receiving, staging, production operations, and shipping, where inventory may be stored, and where inventory balances need to be maintained.  Several MAC-PAC applications use these definitions to determine where an item is at a given time.  On the Part Master File you can specify a primary location and a simultaneous-issue-and-receipt location for each part.

Container Specifications.  Containers are used in a flow environment to store material used at or produced by a manufacturing cell and may be owned by a plant, customer, or vendor.  After all containers are defined on the Container Master File, the primary container used to store each part can be identified on the Part Master File.  The CONBON application uses this information to calculate card quantities, and the Just-in-Time application uses this information to monitor the flow of materials during production.  Note that containers are defined (and assigned to parts) only in a just-in-time flow environment.  Container management can be used to record and track container inventory balances.

System-wide Control Information.  Because it is the first application installed and is required in all installations, Design Engineering is used to define some system-wide control parameters.  This data is stored centrally on the System Control File.  It includes the company name (printed on all reports), error messages, warehouse calendars, and options that determine what transactions will be printed on the system's transaction register.