Lean PCS projects
In a make-to-order production environment, production only starts when a customer places an order. Contrary to an engineer-to-order environment, a product in a make-to-order environment has, for the most part, fixed features and specifications that are unlikely to be changed. In LN, the type of make-to-order without any engineering is also called standard-to-order. The product then has a standard BOM and a standard routing, and is, therefore, a standard product.
Standard-to-order products are mostly products that are not desired to keep in stock, for example, because the product is very expensive or very voluminous. If you produce standard-to-order, the finished products can be transported directly to the customer that ordered them, which saves you most of the inventory costs.
There are two types of projects you can use in Project Control for the production of to-order standard items:
- You can set up a standard project
- You can set up a lean PCS project
Using a lean PCS project, you can peg activities to specific sales orders, with cost known by the PCS project. When a project is generated to manufacture the specified item, no BOM or routing is copied in to the project as those are standard and no engineering is possible once the item goes in projection.
The BOM and routing of a standard to order item are stored independently of the projects making use of them, preventing redundant data.