These are the concepts you need to know to use ProdCalc efficiently:
- Materials: the things you need to produce your items
- Inventory: the sum of all batches for a particular material
- Output Forecast: the things you can sell to your consumers
- Input Forecast: the things you need to buy from your suppliers
- Production Order: the activity you need to execute to produce your final materials
- Material Shortages: the days and quantities will be short of materials to ship away or produce
Materials
There are three types of materials in ProdCalc:
- Raw: materials you buy from another company to be used in your production effort
Rubber, wood, screws, nails, glue, ink, etc… - Fractionated: materials you’ll produce by splitting a raw material in several equal parts to be sold or used in your production effort
Wood slab into wood strips, nails package into individual nails, flour package into 100g, etc… - Assembled: end or intermediary composite structures to be sold or used in your production effort
Wood chair, electrical engine, screws, nails, cakes, etc…
 |  |  |
| RAW | FRACTIONATED | ASSEMBLED |
Inventory
It’s the real amount of material you have now.
The inventory is a set of batches for a particular material and can be originated from purchases, production.
Each batch has its own code and can be traced back from production orders.
Ex. the material rubber kg has 3 batches with quantities 100, 50 and 20 totalizing 170kg
Output Forecast
This are fractionated or assembled materials to be shipped to your costumers.
Example: you have a demand for 100 wood chairs to be delivered in 20 days.
This is not a production or purchase order: it’s a forecast.
Input Forecast
This are raw materials you have to receive in order to be able to perform your production effort.
This is not a purchase order: it’s information consolidated from several supply data you have by purchase orders, spreadsheets used to calculate forecasts, etc…
Example: you have to receive 50 wood slabs in 15 days in order to solve a predicted material shortage
Production Order
Is the activity to be performed in a certain day to solve a material shortage.
Ex: 3000 screws must be produced 5 days from now and the batches duey74rYTg12 and 65hYurfe8DEF will be used with 30kg and 10kg respectively
Material Shortages
This information is updated whenever you modify any of the other elements in ProdCalc.
Example: you create an Output Forecast for the Wood Chair 10 days from now and ProdCalc shows you if there will be a lack of Wood Legs 3 days from now.
Using this information, the production manager will decide if he negotiates a different day with his customer or produces more Wood Legs.
If he decides to produce more Wood Legs, new material shortages may appear and new decisions will have to be made.
