Batch Planning

With batch manufacturing, a product is made from a bill of material in a standard run. The run is determined by vessel size or standard run length. Typical products that use batch manufacturing include:

• Pharmaceuticals

• Foods

• Glues

• Fermented beverages

• Paints

The objective for batch manufacturing is to process work orders with a batch quantity that corresponds to a batch bill of material and to use these orders for Material Requirements Planning (MRP) processing. Just as the bill type uniquely defines a bill of material, you can use the batch quantity with bill type to further define a unique bill.

With this manufacturing method, some restrictions on capacity determine the size of the batch that is produced. For example, you might need to fill the vats to a certain level for the process to perform properly.

In addition, the system specifically defines the component quantities for the batch. For example, a 50-gallon vat requires a given quantity of one component, but the system does not necessarily double the component for a 100-gallon vat. Such components are often enzymes or catalysts.

Vats are often physically located close to a more repetitive downstream process. For example, in the manufacture of bread, dough is mixed and left to rise in a vat before being formed into individual loaves and sent for baking and packaging.

You often express units of measure for batches in terms of volume or weight, such as liters or kilograms.

After you create a batch bill of material and batch routing for the work order header, you process the batch work order to attach the parts list and routing instructions to the work order header. Then you generate a master schedule of batch work orders and review the output.