Answering a serial-number question in minutes
The path from scan to electronic dossier, and what receiving has to capture for the answer to exist at all.
A customer names a serial number and asks what is inside and who signed it off. We walk the real path: a two-way traceability search, tree and graph views, the affected list, then the electronic dossier with supplier certificates, operations, inspections and the acceptance act. It ends with the three places a plant loses the chain: material issued without a batch, receiving without a certificate, output without a serial.
Why the revision never reaches the line, and what an ECN changes
BOM and routing revisions, the current-revision rule, and what an engineering change notice actually changes downstream.
A drawing changes on Monday and on Thursday the line still builds last month's version. The piece explains how BOM and routing revisions work, why a released revision's rows cannot be edited, and what an engineering change notice does once the chief technologist signs the visa. It also shows the affected-orders list, and why open production orders stay on their revision while new ones take the current one.
A promised date you can defend
ATP and CTP in plain words: from free stock in bins to the bottleneck work centre, and where the calculation stops.
A date agreed in a chat has no reason chain, so nobody can explain it later. We show how the order queue builds a promised date: what free stock covers (ATP), what has to be made (CTP), which factor limits the line, and when the work centre is free. Honest about the limits: the queue plans one BOM level, sub-assemblies count as material, and there are no alternative routings.
Bins before barcodes: staging a warehouse rollout
Receiving zone first, pick face second, FEFO last, and the Off to Warn to Block ramp that keeps the warehouse running.
Bin-storage projects usually fail on day one because the plant tries to address the whole warehouse at once. This piece describes an order that works: the receiving zone and putaway first, pick-face bins and issues against a production order second, FEFO picking with batch-mixing rules last. Alongside it, the Off to Warn to Block ramp that lets the warehouse learn before the system starts refusing anything.
The defence contour: 29 requirements, one honest answer each
A checklist you can take to any vendor, and our own score: 25 met, 2 partial, 2 not met.
The Ukrainian defence-manufacturing matrix has 29 business requirements, from licensing and NATO codification to export control, military acceptance and reservation. We explain what each means and what a system must store. Then our own score for release 2.1.0: 25 met, 2 partial, 2 not met, with the gaps named — no state-secret clearance register, no DOT-Chain Defence sync, partial cover for the one-hour audit evidence pack and product configuration.
An andon people actually press
Five problem types and Other, who gets notified, what escalation deadlines do, and why pausing the operation is a setting.
A button nobody presses is worse than no andon at all. The piece works through the five problem types and Other, who is notified first, and what the escalation deadlines do: ten minutes before the signal rises to the planning role, thirty before both are notified again. It also covers how downtime minutes are counted, and why pausing the running operation is a system setting, not a fixed rule.
MES on a CRM platform: when it pays and when it does not
What disappears along with the integration, and the commitment you take on instead.
Production on Creatio means one database with sales and contracts: 225 of our own objects plus ten extended platform ones, no connector, no nightly sync. The piece argues both sides: duplicate master data, reconciliation and the border between commerce and the shop floor disappear, while Creatio licences, the platform upgrade cycle and a skill your team must hold arrive. It also names when the choice is not worth making.
The first 90 days of an MES rollout
From contract to the first production order in the system: 13 phases, who does what, and why the pilot line matters.
Between a signed contract and the first production order in the system sit the 13 phases of the commissioning plan: packages and roles, master data, engineering data, opening balances, then the planning, shop-floor, warehouse and quality go-lives. We set out which work is yours — products, bills of materials, routing maps, bin balances — and which is ours. And separately: why the pilot line matters more than the go-live date.
