What not to do with Comments, and how Item Attributes can help
Posted on: March 27, 2018 | By: Andrew Hall | QAD Manufacturing, QAD Business Process, QAD Distribution
One of the challenges that I have seen over the years is converting a client to QAD when they are coming from an environment that is not accustomed to driving production planning and execution through strict adherence to Item Numbers, Product Structures and Routings that are based on form-fit-and function (FFF). Instead, these clients often drive business behavior through extensive use of comments. Though this approach can work when a business is small and orders can be micro-managed by a handful of extremely knowledgeable employees, it simply does not scale as the business grows. It is time-consuming to enter such comments and they are prone to error at the hands of the writer and the eyes of the reader. The result is that the customer may not receive what they thought they were ordering.
So, how do we change the culture from being based on comments?
First, the business must be committed to following strict rules around assigning new Item Numbers when form, fit, and function are truly changing. We cannot successfully use the same Item Number to represent two different products as it disrupts planning, execution, costing, etc., and it creates risk related to proper customer fulfillment.
Second, where a customer has a slightly different requirement than another, but the difference isn’t deemed to truly change FFF, then utilize the Item Attributes feature within QAD to define slightly different attribute requirements at the Customer level. This will ensure that the Customer gets what they want as QAD picking logic will interpret these attributes correctly without the need for Comments that a human must read and interpret correctly.