Keystone Industries
Machinery and equipment
Engineer-to-order builds with deep bills of material, long-lead purchasing and design changes during the build.
What is different about running one of these
- 01
Bills are deep and the interesting shortages are two or three levels down.
- 02
Long-lead items have to be ordered before the design below them is settled.
- 03
Subassemblies are built ahead and consumed by the main build.
- 04
Cost accumulates over months, so knowing where it stands mid-build matters more than a figure at the end.
Where it usually goes wrong
A shortage three levels down
The top-level build looks fine. A bracket on a subassembly is short, and that is discovered when the subassembly is due to start.
Long-lead ordered against a moving design
Castings are ordered in week two. The design changes in week nine. What is affected is worked out by whoever remembers what was on the original bill.
Cost known only at the end
A six-month build produces its actual cost after it ships, which is exactly too late to do anything about it.
What helps, and why here in particular
- 01
Multi-level MRP
Dependent demand explodes recursively through multi-level bills with scrap, so a shortage on a subassembly surfaces when it is still fixable. - 02
Works orders and subassembly trees
Subassembly work orders are raised as a tree under the parent, and each carries its own snapshot of the bill and routing. - 03
Actual job costing
Cost accumulates from bookings and movements as the build proceeds, against the estimate the quotation was built from.
Next step
See it against machinery and equipment work
A walkthrough starts with your orders, your production flow and your material problems. We follow one of your jobs through the system rather than presenting a feature list.