Logistics work should have a global view, forward-looking and grasp the key control points

On August 20, 2020, at the general manager's office meeting, Mr. Wang Fenghua, general manager, expounded that logistics work should have a global outlook, forward-looking and grasp the key control points

Since the company put forward the concept of "large logistics", the logistics department still has deficiencies in the overall view, early order forecast and bottleneck process capacity planning. This leads to logistics, information flow, data flow is not smooth enough, also directly affects the company's product delivery ability.

Logistics work should have overall thinking

Logistics department is the brain and nerve center of production and operation. Like the operations department and the Staff Department of the army, it should not only do well in MPS scheduling and material matching, but also coordinate human, machine, material and other resources, and control the production progress, report for record and track the abnormal situation. In other words, the work of the logistics department is to extend the management antenna to every link of the supplier and the factory under the premise of ensuring the maximization of product delivery and output according to customer requirements, and feed back various information affecting material matching, production progress and delivery service to the brain through antennae and nervous system, and conduct secondary resource allocation and adjustment through brain analysis. If the logistics department cannot play the role of brain or nerve center, then the production and resource supply departments will be in a war of disorder. Just like the early logistics work, the production control personnel only arrange the orders regardless of whether the materials are matched or not; the production department will make orders for whatever materials are available regardless of the delivery demand, and the whole production will be in a disordered state, which can not achieve the goal of "what is delivered is arranged, what is arranged is what is done, what is done is what is needed" ”What's more, everything is under control.

Logistics work should be forward-looking

At present, the status quo of MPS plan is that the planning department will place orders according to the orders placed by the business department, which is not forward-looking and has no prediction ability. Because our company is a manufacturing enterprise based on orders, if we reserve too much inventory or adopt material preparation mode, it will cause capital pressure. Due to the lack of forward-looking and predictive ability of logistics work, new projects of customers have been placed orders in a certain period of time, and the preliminary resources are still insufficient, and the technical support cannot meet the needs of new projects of customers. Due to the inadequate preparation work in the early stage, the production workshop often has downtime for material shortage, the production plan often appears disorderly adjustment, and the material inventory cycle is too long. This virtually prolongs the manufacturing cycle and affects the balance of effective output and capacity. In fact, there are certain rules for customers to place orders. We can find out the corresponding rules from the number of new products developed by ourselves, the hit rate of new products, the new projects supplied by customers, the return rate of customers, and the return period. By analyzing the big data of ERP system, we can basically predict which period of time and how many orders will be placed by which customers. In addition, our customers are relatively fixed, most of the cooperation with the company are old customers, new customer development is based on the development strategy of the enterprise, and one or two customers are developed every year. In the future work, we should work hard on the order forecast. Only when we achieve "Spring River warm duck prophet", can MPs plan be scientific and feasible.

Focus on the key process of logistics

Most of the time, the logistics work only focuses on the main process, and the control of the auxiliary process and bottleneck process is relatively weak. With the change of customer demand, the product structure is more and more complex. For example, as early as ten years ago, the metal frame had a simple structure, which was basically connected foot wire and plastic foot cover. The electroplating color was gun, silver, gold, coffee and other colors, and it was monochromatic. If we look at the current product structure, there are many kinds of processes only for shaping legs, such as wrapping, sticking back glue, inlaying drill, hot stamping, and so on. If these auxiliary processes of wrapping flower, sticking back glue, embedding drill and hot stamping are not well controlled, technical support is not done in advance, and production capacity is not planned in advance, the overall production progress will be affected. From the current situation, in fact, in ERP system, there are a lot of early warning of dishonesty in the process of plate assembly every week because we did not consider the auxiliary process and bottleneck process when making the production plan. If these auxiliary and bottleneck processes cannot be effectively controlled, they are short boards. Just like the barrel principle, auxiliary and bottleneck processes determine how much water can be contained in the barrel. Therefore, the logistics work must pay attention to these auxiliary processes, and regard all the auxiliary processes restricting the production progress as bottleneck processes and as key work. Instead of plating, soldering spring hinges, paper transfer, Metal foliar logo, Diamond inlay, hot stamping and other temporary outsourcing process. From the perspective of long-term development of the enterprise, whether it is team building, technical research and development and system support, we should appropriately tilt resources to these bottleneck processes, and functional departments such as engineering, quality and logistics should be penetrated into them.

Only with the overall thinking, can the logistics department play a central role. Only by doing a good job in the early prediction of orders can we improve the execution of the plan. Only by solving the bottleneck problem can we ensure the smooth production. As long as we solve these three problems, I believe our logistics, information flow and data flow will be more smooth, and our product delivery capacity will gradually meet the needs of customers.