Corporate Facility DefinitionAny number of facilities can be created within an entity – and any number of departments can be assigned to an facility. Each of the facilities has it's physical location defined.

The top down corporate facility structure of INFO.NET consists of: Entity -> Facility -> Departments.

Corporate Department DefinitionsThere are two types of departments in the INFO.NET system:

· Financial departments – Financial departments are used in conjunction with G/L account numbers to create account / department structures.

· Standard Departments. These entries will be used for employee assignments, capacity planning, production routings and anywhere a system routine requires location or assignment information.

The structure of the INFO.NET corporate environment is from top down:
Entity -> Facility ->Department. It is also permissible to have a structure with departments assigned to each other in a multi level structure within a facility.

Corporate Structure DefinitionsDepartment and facility definitions contain a ‘report to’ specification, permitting a structural listing of the facilities and departments within an entity.

The listings can also include the employees assigned under each department entry.

Warehouse DefinitionThere is no limit on the number of warehouses that may be defined within an entity, and there is no limit on the number of locations that may be defined within a warehouse.

The entry of a warehouse requires a two character code and a name and address for the warehouse. The only prerequisite to defining a warehouse is to define an entity and load the facilities parameters.

The levels of the INFO.NET warehouse data is:
entity > warehouse > location. (There is a parallel structure of entity > plant > work center when defining the production areas).

Production Work Center DefinitionsWork centers are used to define the various production areas and includes the number of personnel available in the work center and the length of the queue time that will be used in production scheduling.

In defining the production calendar, the user will able to specify the number of hours available in each defined work center, and on each shift available in a work center.

The production structure is entity > plant > work center.

Multiple Shift DefinitionsThere is no limit on the number of shifts that can be defined in the production calendar or in labor transactions – and the shift designation is an alphanumeric field, ten characters in length, rather than a single numeric entry.

A shift premium, as a percentage of the base employee rate, can also be applied to work done during a specific shift if desired.

Production Line DefinitionsProduction lines are defined in the INFO.NET system as a series of linked departments and operation classes that can be given minimum and maximum throughput quantities.

In defining repetitive routings, a predefined production line definition can be used to assist in defining the routing process.

Material Location DefinitionsIn the INFO.NET material control environment, the user has the ability to define any number of warehouses within an accounting entry, and, optionally, to define any number of locations within a warehouse.

Each material location definition includes (among other data elements) an inventory account, a definition of various restrictions in its behavior, and an optional definition of its capacity in terms of weight, volume and number of units.

Material Location RestrictionsThere are various, optional, restrictions on the use of a warehouse location including:

· Weight and / or volume. The inventory transaction routines will verify this restriction when material enters a location. As the restriction can be either informational or mandatory. For informational limitations, the transaction routines will just notify the user of the situation. If mandatory, the transaction will be refused.

· Number of units. The same requirements as above exist, but in this case, the gross number of units plus the number of units being received will be examined.

· Discrepant Material Location. If the location is defined as a DMR material location, only discrepant material will be allowed into the location.

There are also, In-transit material locations, customer owned material locations, vendor owned material locations and receiving inspection locations.

Tool / Machine / Instrument DefinitionsThe system will assume that tools and instruments are portable and can be available in quantities greater than one but the system will assume that machines are assigned to specific work centers and are unique items (with a quantity of one). They can also be recorded as fixed assets.

In defining routings, the user will have the ability to indicate the tools, instruments and / or machines required at a given operation, and the shop floor system will permit time to be charged to tools, instruments or machines and these charges will be carried into the job costing system.

As the standard costing system includes equipment charges, and each tool, instrument or machine is assigned an hourly cost, any equipment charges in the shop floor system will result in a comparison between the standard equipment costs at the operation and the actual cost per hour of the equipment, possibly resulting in a rate variance.

The tool, instrument / machine definition also includes a link to the fixed asset system, and, of course, to the preventive maintenance system.

Preventive Maintenance Tracking and SchedulingIf required, each tool or machine can have a preventive maintenance schedule algorithm defined. Once available, the system will produce a listing of the tool or machines scheduled for preventive maintenance between user specified dates.

The preventative maintenance type codes include:

· Hours of use. The shop floor transactions are required to produce the data that can be used to schedule this type of preventive maintenance

· Processed units. As above, the shop floor transactions are required to produce the data that can be used to schedule this type of preventive maintenance.

· Number of days between preventive maintenances. No other data required.

· Day of month. The number of months between maintenances will also be requested.

Production Calendar DefinitionTypically the company will have a default work calendar that has all of the holidays and days of the week defined.

Each department or work center can be assigned a unique calendar that indicates the number of hours worked per day and holidays.

Although the calendar will be created with defaulted hours, the user can revise the calendar to indicate holidays, multiple shifts, or any type of deviation from the normal workday.

The calendar(s) will be used for production, project and business process scheduling and in the finite capacity algorithms.