Material requirements planning (MRP) is a production planning, scheduling, and inventory control system used to manage manufacturing processes. Most MRP systems are software-based, but it is possible to conduct MRP by hand as well.
An investment bank is a financial services company or corporate division that engages in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives and equity securities, and FICC services. Most investment banks maintain prime brokerage and asset management departments in conjunction with their investment research businesses. As an industry, it is broken up into the Bulge Bracket, Middle Market, and boutique market.
Inventory or stock refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.
Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While other industries established the build to order business model, "print on demand" could only develop after the beginning of digital printing, because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress and offset printing.
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order.
In operations research, the cutting-stock problem is the problem of cutting standard-sized pieces of stock material, such as paper rolls or sheet metal, into pieces of specified sizes while minimizing material wasted. It is an optimization problem in mathematics that arises from applications in industry. In terms of computational complexity, the problem is an NP-hard problem reducible to the knapsack problem. The problem can be formulated as an integer linear programming problem.
A purchase order (PO) is a commercial document and first official offer issued by a buyer to a seller, indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services. It is used to control the purchasing of products and services from external suppliers. Purchase orders can be an essential part of enterprise resource planning system orders.
A bill of materials or product structure is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end product. A BOM may be used for communication between manufacturing partners or confined to a single manufacturing plant. A bill of materials is often tied to a production order whose issuance may generate reservations for components in the bill of materials that are in stock and requisitions for components that are not in stock. There are two types of bill materials.
The United States Navy Working Capital Fund (NWCF) is a branch of the family of United States Department of Defense (DoD) Working Capital Funds. The NWCF is a revolving fund, an account or fund that relies on sales revenue rather than direct Congressional appropriations to finance its operations. It is intended to generate adequate revenue to cover the full costs of its operations, and to finance the fund's continuing operations without fiscal year limitation. A revolving fund is intended to operate on a break-even basis over time; that is, it neither makes a profit nor incurs a loss.
The beer distribution game is an educational game that is used to experience typical coordination problems of a supply chain process. It reflects a role-play simulation where several participants play with each other. The game represents a supply chain with a non-coordinated process where problems arise due to lack of information sharing. This game outlines the importance of information sharing, supply chain management and collaboration throughout a supply chain process. Due to lack of information, suppliers, manufacturers, sales people and customers often have an incomplete understanding of what the real demand of an order is. The most interesting part of the game is that each group has no control over another part of the supply chain. Therefore, each group has only significant control over their own part of the supply chain. Each group can highly influence the entire supply chain by ordering too much or too little which can lead to a bullwhip effect. Therefore, the order taking of a group also highly depends on decisions of the other groups.
A blanket order, blanket purchase agreement or call-off order is a purchase order which a customer places with its supplier to allow multiple delivery dates over a period of time, often negotiated to take advantage of predetermined pricing. It is normally used when there is a recurring need for expendable goods. Blanket orders are often used when a customer buys large quantities and has obtained special discounts. Based on the blanket order, sales orders and invoice items can be created as needed until the contract is fulfilled, the end of the order period is reached or a pre-determined maximum order value is reached.
The sales order, sometimes abbreviated as SO, is an order issued by a business or sole trader to a customer. A sales order may be for products and/or services. Given the wide variety of businesses, this means that the orders can be fulfilled in several ways. Broadly, the fulfillment modes, based on the relationship between the order receipt and production, are as follows:
Military supply-chain management is a cross-functional approach to procuring, producing and delivering products and services for military materiel applications. The broad management scope includes sub-suppliers, suppliers, internal information and funds flow.
Build to Order is a production approach where products are not built until a confirmed order for products is received. Thus, the end consumer determines the time and number of produced products. The ordered product is customized, meeting the design requirements of an individual, organization or business. Such production orders can be generated manually, or through inventory/production management programs. BTO is the oldest style of order fulfillment and is the most appropriate approach used for highly customized or low volume products. Industries with expensive inventory use this production approach. Moreover, "Made to order" products are common in the food service industry, such as at restaurants.
Backflush accounting is a subset of management accounting focused on types of "postproduction issuing;" It is a product costing approach, used in a Just-In-Time (JIT) operating environment, in which costing is delayed until goods are finished. Backflush accounting delays the recording of costs until after the events have taken place, then standard costs are used to work backwards to 'flush' out the manufacturing costs. The result is that detailed tracking of costs is eliminated. Journal entries to inventory accounts may be delayed until the time of product completion or even the time of sale, and standard costs are used to assign costs to units when journal entries are made. Backflushing transaction has two steps: one step of the transaction reports the produced part which serves to increase the quantity on-hand of the produced part and a second step which relieves the inventory of all the component parts. Component part numbers and quantities-per are taken from the standard bill of material (BOM). This represents a huge saving over the traditional method of a) issuing component parts one at a time, usually to a discrete work order, b) receiving the finished parts into inventory, and c) returning any unused components, one at a time, back into inventory.
A master production schedule (MPS) is a plan for individual commodities to be produced in each time period such as production, staffing, inventory, etc. It is usually linked to manufacturing where the plan indicates when and how much of each product will be demanded. This plan quantifies significant processes, parts, and other resources in order to optimize production, to identify bottlenecks, and to anticipate needs and completed goods. Since a MPS drives much factory activity, its accuracy and viability dramatically affect profitability. Typical MPSs are created by software with user tweaking.
Material theory is the sub-specialty within operations research and operations management that is concerned with the design of production/inventory systems to minimize costs: it studies the decisions faced by firms and the military in connection with manufacturing, warehousing, supply chains, spare part allocation and so on and provides the mathematical foundation for logistics. The inventory control problem is the problem faced by a firm that must decide how much to order in each time period to meet demand for its products. The problem can be modeled using mathematical techniques of optimal control, dynamic programming and network optimization. The study of such models is part of inventory theory.
Inventory management software is a software system for tracking inventory levels, orders, sales and deliveries. It can also be used in the manufacturing industry to create a work order, bill of materials and other production-related documents. Companies use inventory management software to avoid product overstock and outages. It is a tool for organizing inventory data that before was generally stored in hard-copy form or in spreadsheets.
Tool management is needed in metalworking so that the information regarding the tools on hand can be uniformly organized and integrated. The information is stored in a database and is registered and applied using tool management. Tool data management consists of specific data fields, graphics and parameters that are essential in production, as opposed to managing general production equipment.
Captain Henry Metcalfe was an American Army ordnance officer, inventor and early organizational theorist, known for his 1873 invention of a detachable magazine for small arms, for his work on modern management accounting, the development of the "time card" and his theory on the role of middle management.
