Customer order

Pilot plants utilizing a single-full-sized reactor tube from a commercial plant are generally used to assess the quaUty and performance of individual catalyst lots and to perform plant or customer ordered process tests. A weU-designed pilot unit is capable of simulating the performance of a commercial plant with great accuracy. 

Determine status of all open customer orders and ensure that all shipments have been billed. ... 

In the upper diagram each supplier individually interprets the customer s requirements and either imposes additional requirements or neglects to pass on requirements. The net result at the end of the chain is that the external customer (the one who buys from the organization) does not get satisfaction from the transaction. In the lower diagram, each supplier refers back to the external customer s requirements to calibrate the internal customer s demands. This ensures that the net result matches exactly what the customer ordered. In reality, such calibration should not be necessary if the internal customers demonstrate traceability to external customer requirements. This can be achieved through process reviews performed in each process before instructions are transmitted to subsequent processes. 

How potential customers are persuaded to place orders or invitations to tender How invitations to tender and customer orders are dealt with How proposals and quotations are generated, reviewed, and approved How contracts are negotiated... 

The formal document that accepts a customer order includes a delivery promise, method and time for payment, and identifies any exceptions to the terms and conditions stated on the customer s purchase order. 

While awaiting transportation and customer orders, the materials must be stored. How much storage should be provided for the products and raw materials Whether a two-week or two-month inventory of products and feed are designed will affect the cost of the facilities, as well as the plant land area. 

Finally, an interesting trend in supply-chain management is improving business practices by providing capabilities to improve service for customers. One such concept is capability to promise. The idea is not just to ensure that the product is available, but that the supply chain is capable of delivering the product. This involves, for instance, capability to rapidly change the schedule to accommodate the customer order and interact with the active plant schedule. Such a system was developed at Celanese Fibers, which is integrated with a Customer Order System and enabled via a Web browser. 

On the level of material flow, physical properties ofthe network are designed, i.e., decisions upon the existence of plant sites, warehouses and distribution centers, the transportation links between these components and their capacities are made. The decision upon the customer order decoupling point is a good example of how strategic decisions may influence the level of material flow. 

The two processors are delivering the product via pipes into one of several tanks in a tank farm. Each tank has parameters such as capacity or cleaning time. From the tanks the product is either delivered to processes on site (captive use) or to customers based on given customer orders. Additionally, it may be stored in two external buffers. In that case there are transportation moves from the tank farm to one of the external buffers (in case of over-production) or from the external buffer to the tank farm (in case of shortages in production) induced. 

Fig. 2.5 Daily production output of simulated process and customer orders.

In the Jirst example a customer orders 1 unit with 70% probability and 5 units with 30% probability. The number of orders per period is Poisson distributed with mean 4. Figure 6.2 shows the resulting (discrete) compound Poisson density and the cumulated distribution and their gamma approximations. 

The consequence is that data has to be maintained and consolidated in two systems. Because also some planning and production execution functions will stay in the ERP system, there is quite often the need for the planner to work with both systems and to gather information from both systems (e.g., customer order details, confirmations from production execution, which is handled in the ERP system) to make planning decisions. 

The Ordering system attaches Orders to Customers and provides information about the demand for Products, although not the actual stock (see Figure 10.24). There are operations for creating new Customers, Orders, and Items. On a longer-term basis, new Products can be created. When an Order is fulfilled, it is removed from the outstanding list and linked to a new OrderFulfillment on the completed list. 

Customer order schedules need to be integrated with deliveries, production orders and procurement orders. Volumes and values are already defined. Therefore, the focus is on a time schedule of orders considering production and distribution lead times. Fig. 21 illustrates the main task in value chain operations also now focused on a geographical region such as Europe. The individual schedules of sales orders and purchase orders have to be integrated with distribution and production schedules. 

Distribution scheduling covers warehouse scheduling inch picking and packing as well as transport scheduling. Transportation route optimization and bundling of transportation volumes have to match the customer order schedule. 

Modifications of the system continue to be infused as methods and processes improve. In 1998, the SYSCO Order Selector (SOS), another module of SUS, was installed to improve order accuracy and inventory control. A wrist-mounted scanner verifies at the touch of a finger that the product selected is indeed what the customer ordered and virtually eliminates the opportunity for visual errors. Usage of this unit has improved the accuracy of products selected from one error in 800 to one in every three or four thousand items picked by the product selector, significantly improving efficiency and customer satisfaction, and reducing restocking costs. 

Reduction of labor due to the use of computers is becoming a trend. Many concrete producers take advantage of the features offered by computers - direct entry of customer orders, automatic delivery docket printing, and remote workstations - to reduce personnel. Customer orders can be taken and entered at the head office using a remote terminal. 

The only way to avoid this is by strict analysis of the supply chain from the customer order to final product delivery. Definition of the optimized (theoretical) process and sequential work towards a high service level approach allow the identification of gaps, and of opportunities which might not always be the cheapest (ship versus train versus plane) but could be the most effective way to reduce capital costs and shorten planning scope - an important aspect, especially in volatile customer markets with long production processes on the (chemical) supplier side. As in the case of CIP, this needs clear parameters, KPIs, commitment from all players, and regular tracking. The most important parameters are the lead time for all products, optimal lot sizes, replenishment points, and safety inventories. 

The objective of order and demand management is to forecast future sales as precisely as possible, manage customer orders from entry to delivery, and consolidate forecast and orders with supply chain inventory requirements in order to generate a holistic demand plan for purchasing, production, and distribution planning. 

Customer order management and fulfillment. Effective and effitient order management relies on transparent policies and decision rules reflecting customer needs... 

Supporting IT systems Finally, the accuracy and speed of an integrated process is heavily influenced by the availability of IT systems, which provide a common database, automated functions like Materials Requirements Planning (MRP), and opportunities for simulation and optimization (for instance, real time finite capacity production scheduling, or on-line customer order confirmation based on existing overall supply chain inventory or capacity). 

---