Introduction to the Advanced Manufacturing Module

Introduction to the Advanced Manufacturing Module

Advanced Manufacturing helps you model your production processes, transforming components and raw materials into finished goods. Advanced Manufacturing also includes the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) application, letting your users carry out production tasks on the go.

Advanced Manufacturing is for when you need to account for more complex production processes, such as when production capacity is limited by resources, part of the process is carried out by a third party, or multiple items are produced from the same process. If this sounds more complicated than your requirements, you should check out our Standard Manufacturing features, which are included with all accounts.

This article will give you an introduction to what is included in the Advanced Manufacturing module and the order of the steps you should take first.

Advanced Manufacturing is an add-on and must be added to your base subscription.

Add the Advanced Manufacturing module to your subscription

Some features of the production module (assembly, disassembly, and inventory write-offs) are included in the Cin7 Core base subscription. Advanced manufacturing consists of extra features and requires an extra subscription, please see Cin7 Core Plans and Pricing for more information.

You can try the Advanced manufacturing module for 30 days free of charge, either when you begin a free trial with Cin7 Core or at any time after signing up to the base plan.

When trying to access any advanced manufacturing features, such as production orders or production settings, you will be informed you do not have access to the Advanced manufacturing module. Click Start trial to start your 30-day trial of the module. If you have completed the trial period already, you will be give the option to Update subscription instead.

The advanced manufacturing module can also be added to your subscription from the My subscription page.

Production module permissions (Advanced manufacturing)

Cin7 Core offers fine-grained control over user permissions. Grant users full or read-only permission to the different features of the production module, and create roles with pre-defined permissions to assign to users.

See user permissions explained for more.
My Subscription

Cin7 Core allows you to set the following production permissions for advanced manufacturing (Settings → Users and Roles → Production):

The Factory Calendar defines your default working days and hours, letting you plan capacity and schedule orders accurately. This is the first step you should take when starting to use the Advanced Manufacturing module.

Production – Undo

Shop floor locations are where you manufacture finished goods. Logistics paths define how your production location is connected to where your products are sold and where your components are stored. These can be multiple different locations or everything can happen in the same place. This allows Cin7 Core to take lead times into account, automatically generate purchase and transfer orders, and log stock movements.

See Shop floors and logistics paths for more information.
     

Create work centers and bins

Work centers define the area where a production operation takes place within the business (for example, a specific workshop, room or section of the shop floor).

Bins are used to specify where the stock is stored within a location. For a production work center, bins define where the components should be brought in order to start a production operation, and where the production output should be stored when production is finished.

See Work centers and bins for more information.

Set up production resources and costs

Manufacturing finished products requires resources like tools, machines, labor, or even water and electricity. Each resource has a capacity; the amount of finished product it can produce at a time.Cin7 Coreuses resource capacity to calculate how much time is required to complete a production operation, production run, and production order. As well as capacity, resources incur a cost when they are used, with more use equal to higher costs.

See Production resources and capacity and resource costs for more information.
Settings → Reference Books → Locations and Bins

Create a production BOM

The Production BOM defines each step of a production operation, its duration, and the components and resources required to complete each step. A Production BOM is an essential feature for resource capacity planning and correctly scheduling production operations. Once you have set up your factory calendar, work centers, and resources, you can begin creating production BOMs.

See Production BOM for detailed instructions and examples of this feature in action.

Customize production process settings

These settings include a range of parameters to customize your production process to meet your business needs. This includes turning on product tracing, ordering components automatically, changing default co-manufacturing procurement type, and more.

See Production process customization settings for detailed information on each setting.

Map a work in progress account

Production orders specify aWork in progress and Finished goodsaccount so the accounting transactions of a production operation are correctly recorded.

By default, the finished goods account will be set to yourInventory controlaccount, but this can be manually edited from the production order.

You can specify which work in progress account to use by default from the Account mapping screen.

Create production orders

A production order defines the finished good to be produced, the location where the production will take place, the date and time of the production, and the number of components and resources required. The production order also defines the sequence of operations to be performed and the costs of finished goods.

See Production orders for detailed step-by-step instructions for how to carry out production orders.
Main Menu → Production → Settings → Work Centre

  

Capacity Planner

The Capacity Planner is a resource allocation reporting and re-planning tool. The Capacity Planner shows the capacity for a selected planning period, which resources are overallocated, and allows re-planning of capacity to ensure smooth delivery of production orders.

See Capacity Planner for more information.

  

Scheduler

The Cin7 Core Production Scheduler visualizes production order information. You can view production order information, sales orders (containing goods to be produced), and resource capacity in Gantt chart format.

The Scheduler shows which orders depend on one another, how long orders will take, and what needs to be completed in what order. Production orders, production runs, and operations can all be rescheduled from the Scheduler intuitively using the drag and drop editing features.

See Scheduler for more information.

  

Production Reports (Advanced Manufacturing)

Production reports let you analyze production costs, view when orders are overdue, identify component shortages, and more.

Users can have read-only or full access to these reports with the Production Reports permission.

Users with a subscription to the Cin7 Core automation module can set up Report Scheduling, Reminders and Notifications for these reports.

See Production Reports for more information.

Manufacturing Execution System (MES) application

MES is Core Cin7's mobile application to allow your shop floor workers to input production tasks on-the-go.

Each production order consists of a list of operations for your shop floor workers to carry out. Each day, MES tells shop floor workers what tasks they have for the day, which orders should be carried out first, and which components are required. Cin7 Core's MES mobile application makes this information transparent and allows each shop floor worker to mark production actions as started and completed from their device.

Actions executed in the MES application are passed to Cin7 Core to initiate stock movements and accounting transactions for production orders, production run, capacity planner, and scheduler.

Learn more about MES application.

What's next? Advanced production features

Once you understand the production foundations found in this article, here are some more advanced production features that can help you on your manufacturing journey.

    The same Work Center can be reused across multiple Shop floor locations. E.g., WC-02 Sewing Machines can exist in more than one production location. A bin can be assigned for each shop floor location.

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