Based Batches Demand Planning An SME On-site Materials Management System Development

Compared with large manufacturing companies, the production characteristics ofSMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) mostly are “small batch and multi-type”.,the most striking dilemma during production for these enterprises is, the variety of rawmaterials must be on shelf must all be ready, while the consumption of each type is verysmall even tiny. Meanwhile, these raw materials with tiny consumption have to be keptwhole package when put on shelf. So the remaining fraction of such raw materials tendsto be very large. This leads to severe huge accumulation of such remaining materials inthe process of small batch production. However, the popular ERP (Enterprise ResourcePlanning) system does not take account of this problem. Therefore, developing amaterials management system to solve this problem for SMEs has become an urgentdemand.Suzhou Jin Song New Materials Co., Ltd., was selected as a cooperation partner,a new program of “on-site warehouse” was proposed based on the principle of “MRP”(Material Requirements Planning). The overall designing idea of the program is toconvert “dispersive accumulation" into "dispersive storage” and to realize “dispersivestorage, centralized appropriation” utilizing modern electronic information technology.The goal of this program is to vitalize overstock, reduce stocks, and eventually reduceproduction costs, enhance enterprises’ competitiveness.This article introduces designing idea for On-site Materials Management Systemthat is suitable for SMEs and its implementation. The functions of this system includeworksheet for parts-receiving, setup of on-site warehouse, formation of on-siteappropriate sheet etc. By using this system, enterprises would greatly reduce cost onmaterials management and reduce technological difficulty of implementation and wouldgreatly reduce accumulation of remaining materials at on-site warehouse.The main work in designing this system includes:1. Establish visual “on-site warehouse” to solve the first-batch-receiving problemduring management of material-receiving process;2. Compile “uniform material numbers” to meet on-site warehouse management;3. Design system functional modules and a database; 4. Design a friendly user operation interface.After design work and test run of this system, the effectiveness and advance of thissystem have been preliminary verified. Because of these, this system can be thought asa improvement and development to the traditional ERP and it would be of greatlymeaningful when this system gets more application in more SMEs.