Research And Development On Material Management System For Mould Companies

Die and mold industry is a typical order-oriented industry with single-batch but multiple products. In general, the customers'orders are unpredictable and the manufacturing process is not stable, therefore, the production plan and the demand of materials are frequently changed, and the production process is often out of control, which will cause the delivery date and the quality can not be guaranteed. In addition, because of the characteristic of single-batch production, the most of materials for a mould are usually and temporarily purchased when needed. Consequently, how to make the purchasing plan and control the purchasing process in time will be the critical issues in a die & mould company.According to the features and requirements of the material management for die & mould manufacturing, the principles of concurrent engineering and reconstruction of business process are applied to improve the material management. The functional requirements and the architecture of material management system for die and mold are modeled with the UML method. The BOM is used as the link to integrate the material management with the production management and design management. With the version control of BOM, the material flow can be quickly monitored and tracked backward, and the purchasing plan can also be made in time. In order to quickly response the frequent changes of the design and manufacturing, a message-based work flow control method is adopted to manage the changes and make the purchasing to be updated in time.Based on the methods mentioned above, a material management system was developed upon J2EE and MVC architecture. It has been integrated with eMan (a system for the production management of Die & Mould), and successfully applied in some mould companies.