Material management

Set it up in your plant

Setting up Material management in your plant. Material management keeps every consumable, chemical, raw material, packaging, spare part and tool your plant stocks: its lots, where they are, what is left, and every movement. Its steps (consume, return, produce) let your own transactions take material as part of the work.

1. Install itIT

   On the plant's OpenCore MES server, in its plant folder: sign in once with a licence token from your account at suites.opencoremes.com (one token per installation: production, test, training), install the suite, then restart OpenCore MES (opencore-mes start, or the service that runs it). The start log then lists it.

   opencore-mes suite login

   opencore-mes suite install materials

2. Try it on a test installation firstIT

   Install it on a test or training installation before production. There, load its sample records (Designer → From the suites → Load its sample records) and walk the screens with the people who will use them. Samples never go on production.

3. Prepare People & departmentsAdministrator

   The suite's designs give their roles to the groups production (stores and users), quality (inspection and release), engineering (planning) and it (read only). Check those groups exist in People & departments with the right people (or rename them in the change, next step), and that each department that must approve has its representatives.

4. Take its designs through a changeDesigner

   Designer → From the suites → Start a change from it. The change holds the materials, locations, lots and movements, the stock moves, the lot expiry and reorder plans and the stores screens. Change what differs in your plant before submitting (labels, fields, limits, screens). Run the fitness test: every transaction's scenarios run in a sandbox. Submit; a reviewer passes it; Production, Quality and Engineering approve it; it goes live as one change, all of it or none.

   • Nothing goes live until it is approved: the suite only offers its designs.
   • Once live they are your plant's own designs: they keep working if the suite is removed.
5. Enter your materials and locationsEngineering

   Create your materials (part number, kind, unit, storage, shelf life, whether a certificate of conformance is needed, its safety data sheet, reorder point and quantity) and your locations (stores, quarantine, cold store, line-side racks, flammables cabinet). For many at once, import them from Excel (Data → Import / export, or the Import & Export suite from your ERP's export).

6. Load your opening stockEngineering

   Enter the lots in stock today with their quantity, location and use-by date, and release them, and set each material's stock on hand to match: the opening balances a planner enters once. From then on only the moves change quantities.

   • After the opening stock is in, remove the opening policies (mat_material-opening, mat_lot-opening) through a change, so that only the moves change stock.
7. Run the storesProduction

   Stores screen: Receive each delivery into quarantine (a use-by date and certificate where the material asks); Quality releases or rejects it on the Inspection tab; Issue, Transfer, Count and Scrap from the Stock tab, earliest use-by first. Lots expire by themselves on their date; a material below its reorder point asks Engineering to order it (the bell).

8. Let your transactions consume materialDesigner

   In your own transactions (a track-out, a glue-up, a kitting step), add a material step so the work and the material it uses are one run, all or nothing:

   • By material, it takes the released lots earliest use-by first, across lots; not enough in stock refuses the run, in words.
   • Each lot taken is logged as a movement used for what the run names; the material's stock on hand goes down.

   { "step": "materials.consume", "material": { "input": "glue" }, "qty": { "input": "glue_used" }, "used_for": { "input": "lot" } }

   { "step": "materials.return", "lot": { "input": "pad_lot" }, "qty": { "input": "left" } }

   { "step": "materials.produce", "material": { "input": "mix" }, "lot_id": { "input": "batch" }, "qty": { "input": "made" }, "location": { "input": "into" } }

9. Go liveQuality

   Train the storekeepers and inspectors on the Stores screen, check a first count against the shelves, and watch Stock movements for the first week.

The same guide is in FLAMES once the suite is installed: Designer, From the suites, Set-up guide.