ELStiVIER Computers in Industry 3 1 (1996) 293-304

On t:he unification of bills of materials and routings

I.P. Tatsiopoulos *
Mechanical Engmercng Department, Industrial Management and OR Section, National Technical lJnrwrsi@ of Athens (NTUAI, 15780
.Zogruj%s, Greece

Abstract

This paper examinzs first the far-reaching consequences of unifying bills of material and routings on the basic functions
of production planning and control, i.e.: (a) On the structure of the production database and the opportunity for significant
simplification; (b) On the mid-term planning of materials and capacities (traditional MRP and CRP software modules) and
the chances for simultaneous planning of materials and capacities; (c) On the opportunity to support the extended enterprise
and lean production concepts through better planning of the supply chain; (d) On shop floor control and the chances for
reducing the volume of transactions and apply more effective scheduling strategies. In parallel, the paper proposes a new
production planning and control (PPC) concept which capitalizes on the above consequences. This concept has led to the
development of a PPC software system that uses the traditional and widely accepted MRP processing logic, thus avoiding
the intricacies of the OPT system and being much more readily accepted by manufacturing personnel.

Keywords: Manufacturing data management; Bills of materials; Routings; Product data engineering

1. Introduction reasons for this data separation. Goldratt (1988) be-

In the production management body of knowledge
as well as in the information technology that sup-
ports it, i.e. the M.RP II and CAD/CAPP/CAM
software packages, there is a long established tradi-
tion in separating the product structure in the form of
the Bills of Material (BOA4) and the process struc-
ture in the form of Routings (Mather, 1987). These
two groups of data. items together with the work
centers as capacity units form the traditional basic
elements of the manufacturing process (Bertrand et
al., 1990) (Fig. 1).
Significant authors and production management
practitioners have given interesting though different
_ Email: itat@central.ntua.gr
lieves that the separation stems from the fact that the
early attempts to build an MRP system were done
when computer disks were not available and com-
puter tapes were the only media available to store
voluminous data. Since the tape would have to be
rewound for the explosion of each assembly needing
a common sub-assembly, they chose repeating the
bill of materials of the sub-assembly but storing its
routings (which contained the vast majority of data)
only once. According to Goldratt, when computer
disks appeared, no effort was made to consolidate
those two files because probably too much was
already invested in this method of storing the bill of
materials and routing data separately.
However, Goldratt does not explain why this sep-
aration existed long before the appearance of com-
puterized production management systems (REFA,

0166.3615/96/$15.00 Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

PfI SO166-3615(96)00057-7
294 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/
Fig. 1. The basic elements of the manufacturing process (Bertrand
et al., 1990).
1974). The reasons for data separation given by
Sartori (1988) and Bertrand et al. (1990) seem to be
more sound. Sartori starts from a unified network,
which is the traditional process chart of the Work
Study toolbox, and explains why some of the nodes
of this network become material SKUs and attain a
unique part number while others become processing
steps in the sequence of operations of a process plan.
Bertrand et al. (1990) make the distinction between a
materials control system called GFC (Goods Flow
Control) and production units (PUS> which execute
production between the stocking points of the GFC.
They group the selection criteria of GFC stocking
points and corresponding GFC-items, which form the
bills of materials, in demand uncertainty, product
structure and capacity bottlenecks.
In summary the reasons put forward by the above
authors for the traditional separation in two different
groups of data entities, those of bills of materials and
routings, are mainly three:
To avoid an inflation of part numbers.
The existence of scheduling stages with interme-
diate stores.
The need for holding different attributes to the
entities Materials and Operations.
In most MRP based software, operations can only
be defined in relationship with a particular compo-
nent in the BOM structure. Hastings (1992) presents
the Bill of Manufacture (BOA@-) structure which
specifies the sequence of production operations re-
quired to make a finished or intermediate product,
together with materials needed at each operation.
From a database point of view, this can be repre-
sented in traditional BOM processors by defining a
relationship between the BOM components and the
routing operations (Van Veen, 1992, p. 12). This
relationship specifies which component products are
Computers in Industq 31 (1996) 293-304
used in a particular operation in the routing. The
BOMfr concept is particular useful in situations
where materials are released to downstream opera-
tions in assembly lines, e.g. in the electronics indus-
try. However, it only represents an add-on to the
classical BOM organization and not a fundamental
integration of materials and operations (Fig. 2).
The first systematic effort to develop a production
planning and control system by unifying bills of
materials and routings in the form of the so-called
Product Networks is the OPT (Optimized Produc-
tion Technology) system (Goldratt, 1988). Those
networks have the general form of bills of materials,
however they include manufacturing operations as
well. They are composed of nodes representing stages
in the journey of materials from the time they are
purchased, through the processing and assembly,
until they are finally sent to fulfill customer orders.
However, the implementation of OPT concepts rep-
resents a rather complicated finite scheduling ap-
proach which is very difficult to explain to the
manufacturing personnel, especially of small and
medium sized enterprises (SMES).
This paper examines first the far-reaching conse-
quences of unifying bills of material and routings on
the basic functions of production planning and con-
trol, i.e.:
- On the structure of the production database and
the opportunity for significant simplification.
* On the mid-term planning of materials and capac-
ities (traditional MRP and CRP software mod-
ules) and the chances for simultaneous planning
of materials and capacities.
* On the opportunity to support the extended enter-
prise and lean production concepts through better
planning of the supply chain.
,-
i PART I OPERATION
Fig. 2. The Bill of Manufacture (BOMfr) data structure (Van
Veen, 1992).
 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/ Computers in Industv 31 (1996) 293-304 295

. On shop floor control and the chances for reduc-

ing the volume of transactions and apply more
effective scheduling strategies.
- On product costing, engineering changes and ef-
fectivity management.
In parallel, the paper proposes a new production
planning and control (PPC) concept which capital-
izes on the above consequences. This concept has led
to the development of a PPC software system that
uses the traditional and widely accepted MRP pro-
cessing logic, thus avoiding the intricacies of the
OPT system and being much more readily accepted
by manufacturing personnel.

2. Simplifying the production database

Effort towards simplifying the production man-

agement database is done having in mind that the Fig. 4. Proposed data model with unified bills of materials and
complexity of a database schema or subschema is a routings.
measure of the effort required to understand its
structure and to design applications for it. This means ment systems @cheer, 1978) as illustrated in Fig. 3,
according to Pels and Wortmann (1990) that the includes numerous data entities with complex rela-
complexity is proportional to the total number of tions in order to define parts and their structures
specifications (entity classes, relationships, at- (bills of material), processing (routings, operations),
tributes, constraints or validation rules) in the capacities (work centers, machines, personnel) and
database schema under consideration. suppliers.
The classical conceptual database schema for the The proposed simplification of this schema in-
basic state-independent data of production manage- cludes a reduction of entity classes through the intro-
duction of a Resources entity which unifies bills
of materials and routings and a Sources entity
which unifies work centers and suppliers. These
unifications give also the chance for a reduction of
attributes through an object-oriented approach to the
design of the production database.

2.1. The Resources and Sources object classes

Both materials and work center operations may be

considered as Resources needed in manufacturing
goods.
f WORKCENTRE From a conceptual database design viewpoint, as
implemented in the present study, we can have a
single Resources object class. This Resources
entity related to the Structures entity (parent-son
relationships) form the product networks that include
both materials and operations (Fig. 4).
Fig. 3. Classical state-independent production database schema The unification of BOMs and routings may or
(Scheer, 1978). may not be made visible to the end user depending
296 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/ Computers in Industry 31 (19961 293-304

on his traditional working practices. This can be
done by making a proper use of the create view
capabilities of relational DBMSs. However, there is
practical evidence that users in small manufacturing
firms prefer the unified view of the product network
which they find easier to understand, handle and
maintain, instead of the separate BOMs and routings
views.
Another step towards simplification and integra-
tion at the same time can be taken by replacing the
separate Work Centers and Suppliers entities
by a single Sources entity. From the point of
view of the production planner, the work centers and
the suppliers are nothing else but sources providing
either manufactured parts or raw materials.
The design of our simplified production database
follows the object-oriented analysis approach (Coad
and Yourdon, 1990) in order to achieve a reduction
of entities and attributes through the explicit repre-
sentation of commonality. This is done by defining a
classification structure of the Resources and
Sources objects. The classification structure por-
trays class-member organization, which reflects gen-
eralization-specialization and provides a basis for
subsequent inheritance, and gives an explicit repre-
sentation of attributes commonality within such a
structure.
Classification structure also provides a leveling
of information about a problem domain putting at-
tributes that are common at a higher level, and then
extending the attributes to a lower level. Within a
classification structure, inheritance makes it possible
to share attributes.
In this respect, the attributes that pertain to all
Resources or to all Sources are defined higher
in the classification structure, and are extended by
the specializations (materials and operations, work
centers and suppliers).
The proposed simplified production database con-
ceptual schema unifying bills of materials and rout-
ings as well as work centers and suppliers can be
seen in Fig. 4.
2.2. Reduction of database attributes
A careful design of the generalized RESOURCES
and SOURCES object classes would permit a mini-
mization of the total number of attributes by assign-
ing common meaning to as many as possible. In this
way there would be left a relatively small amount of
attributes to the specialized subclasses MATERI-
ALS, OPERATIONS and WORK CENTERS, SUP-
PLIERS respectively.

RESOURCE (ResourceNo, Description, Date-

Changed, Cost.. )
MATERIAL (ResourceNo, Issues, Receipts, On-
Hand, Allocations,. . . )
OPERATION (ResourceNo, SourceNo, SetupTime,
StandardTime, Yield,. . . )

SOURCE (SourceNo, Description, Location, Re-

sponsible, DateChanged, QualityRating, Deliv-
eryRating, . .>

WORK CENTER (SourceNo, Efficiency, Num-

berOfShifts, NumberOfMachines, . ..)
SUPPLIER (SourceNo, PaymentTerms, AmountTo-
tal,...)

RESOURCE REFERENCE (ResourceNo, SourceNo,

LeadTime, Cost,. . . )
STRUCTURE (ResourceNo, ResourceNo, Quantity)
 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/Computers
2.3. Part numbers end coding conventions
The traditional part number and coding conven-
tions in PPC systems with separate bills of materials
and routings are the following:
(a) A part number change is necessary at all
points in the process where interface transactions
may be anticipated and buffer stocks are required. To
distinguish the items concerned, the part number
should change just before the buffer stock, or store
concerned. In other words, you issue and you pro-
cess a given name, but you deliver an object with a
different name to the next buffer point, considering it
to be the structural parent of its predecessor. This
is the origin of the genealogical terminology inherent
in bill of materials definitions and of the routing,
another key concept in manufacturing information
systems.
(b) A routing is the sequence of steps a part goes
through from issue to delivery, i.e. the subprocess
between name changes. The components in progress,
whose aggregate constitutes the work-in-progress
(WIP) inventory, are always expressed as child
parts, whereas the routing always refers to the
parent part , i.e. to the output of the subprocess.
The far-reaching implications on the two main
concepts of manufacturing management (bills of ma-
terial and routings) underline the importance of
choices affecting part numbers.
When bills and materials are unified, a fundamen-
tal difference is induced in part number coding con-
ventions, especially those concerning the work-in-
process inventory. An important issue in production
management systems is the way to store inventory
and work-in-process inventory data. Consider for
example, the inventory of a particular part that was
already processed at a certain operation of the rout-
ing and was not yet processed through the next
operation. At this sl:age we have two ways to code
this inventory. We can call it by the last operation it
went through or we can arbitrarily assign it to the
next operation it is supposed to be processed through.
In traditional MRP systems most of the work-in-pro-
cess inventory is considered to be stored physically
in the queue of the machine where it is to be further
processed, therefore it is quite natural to assign the
inventory to the next operation code.
While two options are open for work-in-process
in Industry 31 (1996) 293-304 297
inventory, this is not the case for finished parts
inventories where always the only choice is to name
them according to the last operation that was per-
formed on them. This leads to a separation between
stores inventory (finished parts and finished goods)
where the code name is equal to the last operation
performed and work-in-process inventory where the
code name is equal to the next operation to be
performed.
When bills of materials and r-outings are unified,
it is mandatory to always name inventory according
to the last operation it passed. This data structure
leads to the consolidation of both work-in-process
and the stores inventory file.
3. Consequences to goods flow control and the
extended enterprise
The unification of bills of materials and routings
as well as the induced unification of work centers
and suppliers have profound consequences on the
structure of the Goods Flow Control system. Those
consequences are internally leading to a simultane-
ous material and capacity requirements planning and
externally leading to a comprehensive support of the
extended enterprise concept.
3.1. Simultaneous materials and capacity planning
A major criticism to the MRP II approach con-
cerns the concept of successive material and capacity
requirements planning. The results of the material
requirements planning stage (MRP) are the input to
the following capacity requirements planning stage
(CRP) and feedback can be achieved only with
difficulty. A further very strong drawback has its
origin in the issue of planned lead times used in
MRP calculations. The notion of MRP scheduling
based on known average lead times makes MRP
essentially capacity insensitive. It involves the major
assumption that the actual shop floor loading at the
time of planning conforms to these planned values,
which is almost never the truth. What is needed is an
integrated approach of simultaneous materials and
capacity management @cheer, 19881.
A first effort towards simultaneous material and
capacity planning (Fisk and Seagle, 1978) is to use
298 I.P. Tat.kpulos/ Computers
resource requirements planning in order to determine
the capacity requirements of every work center in-
duced by the sales plan. Then an aggregate planning
model is used in order to determine production rates
for every particular work center. The decision takes
into account the projected work-in-process invento-
ries expressed in production hours which are given
by the difference of cumulative output (capacity
requirements) and cumulative input (production rate)
at the end of each planning period.
Against the attractiveness of the approach, Fisk
and Seagle caution the user that it does not necessar-
ily yield a feasible production plan. Dependencies
between work centers can make it impossible to
achieve the indicated production rates. For example.
to inventory 100 hours in work center 5 may require
release of an order some weeks earlier to an already
overloaded work center 3.
Another early effort is reported by Hastings and
Willis (1982) for an integrated approach to produc-
tion scheduling and material requirements planning
(<<Schedule Based MRP,,) that simultaneously com-
putes a feasible production schedule and the related
material requirements plan. The approach is based on
the BOMfr data structure.
An earlier effort of Tatsiopoulos is based on the
Input/Output Control (IOC) methodology (Plossl
and Wight, 1973; Kingsman et al., 1989; Wiendhal,
1987; Bertrand, 19811. IOC is similar to the graphi-
cal-tableau approach for aggregate production plan-
ning if one replaces physical inventories with work
backlogs. The concept of IOC was originally ad-
vanced in connection with individual work centers at
the shop orders release decision level and this is how
it has been incorporated in some standard MRP II
software packages (e.g. the module SOLAR of the
COPICS package by IBM, 1983). This method can
be extended to include the medium-term production
planning level forming a hierarchical input/output
control system (Tatsiopoulos, 1993).
A net-change MRP-like approach is used. In
stage-by-stage MRP the Net Requirements of the
parent item become Gross Requirements for its com-
ponents. In the same way, when in our case we take
the decision to change the production rate of a
particular work center, this change induces changes
in the capacity requirements of the work centers
dependent previous work center(s). What we need is
in Industy 31 (19961 293-304
a flow network showing the relations between the
work centers in the shop stored in the computer
memory exactly the same way that the bills of
material of the products are stored.
The calculations of the changes of capacity re-
quirements back to the first work center in the
manufacturing sequence follow the gross-net require-
ments calculation principle of MRP. The role of
inventories is played by the work backlogs in order
to define the required changes of production rate (net
requirements) of a dependent work center caused by
the changes in its capacity requirements (gross re-
quirements). The backlog of the work center may
absorb the fluctuation and leave no need for change
in production rate.
The problem with all the above approaches is that
they are using the differentiation in coding between
the SKUs (part number after the last completed
operation) and the WIP (Work-In-Process), i.e. code
of the next operation in the process plan. This differ-
entiation makes it difficult to recognize the fact that
work backlogs (expressed in hours before a work
center) and work-in-process incentories (expressed
in pieces after a work center) are practically the two
sides of the same coin, and that work-in-process
inventories are nothing else but stored capacity. The
unification of bills of materials and routings makes it
easy to overcome this confusion and consolidate all
inventory buffers in a factory.
The most known effort to deal with the above
problem is the OPT system (Goldratt, 1988) that
unifies bills of material and routings forming product
networks. However, the implementation of OPT con-
cepts represents a rather complicated finite schedul-
ing approach which is very difficult to explain to the
manufacturing personnel, especially of small and
medium sized enterprises (SMES).
The concepts presented in this paper have led to
the development of a PPC mfmare system that u.ses
the standard and widely accepted MRP processing
logic, thus avoiding the intricaciesof the OPT sys-
tem and being much more readily accepted by manu-
facturing personnel. The unified network of bills of
materials and routings, according to the data model
of Fig. 4 and the modified coding conventions of
part numbers and operations of Section 2.3, helps to
include the local work center stores in the standard
MRP running. This simply described modification
 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/ Computers in Industry 31 (1996) 293-304 299

SUFPLIER_ORDER

ALTERN_OPERATION WORK CENTRE :

_I

I I

Fig. 5. Traditional requirements planning data model.

has a number of significant and far-reaching results the MRP system for offsetting calculations refer
on the operation mode of the MRP system, as fol- now to the operation queuing times rather than
lows: the work orders total transit times. This makes
* The average ma.nufacturing lead times used by them much more accurate.

RESOURCE )+ RESOURCE-SOURCE p-ti7

+ $

ORDER
/

Fig. 6. Proposed data model for simultaneous material and capacity planning
300 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/Computers
. Work-in-process inventories are taken into ac-
count in the MRP gross-net calculations which
does not happen in traditional MRP systems.
- Work orders are issued directly to the work cen-
ters instead of a two-level procedure with work
orders corresponding to a sequence of operations
and a separate operation tickets assignment pro-
cedure.
- The MRP lot sizing rules may be applied locally
at the operation and work center or machine level
rather than the work order and part number level
as foreseen by standard MRP. This gives the
opportunity to take advantage of local lot-sizing
rules, which are imposed either by technological
factors (e.g. bum-in testing in electronics manu-
facturing) or by capacity utilization factors (e.g.
increase bottleneck capacity).
The implications concerning the data model to
cover the material and capacity requirements plan-
ning are presented in Fig. 5 (traditional approach)
and Fig. 6 (simplified approach of this study for
simultaneous material and capacity planning). Dur-
ing implementation it became apparent that this type
of database modeling resulted in many benefits in
terms of data handling, computer memory require-
ments and a very large increase in processing speed.
3.2. Support of the extended enterprise
The notion of the extended enterprise is well
described in Browne et al. (1995) and Jarillo (1993).
The combination of globalization and mass cus-
tomization pressures forces individual enterprises to
work together across the value chain in order to meet
customer needs. This results to inter-enterprise net-
working which is called extended enterprise. Ap-
proaches like JIT and Lean Production fit well into
this context of the extended enterprise.
According to Jarillo (1993) the extended enter-
prise - which he calls strategic networks - should
not be confused with a network of subcontractors. A
strategic network should provide companies with the
advantages of the two traditional organizational
forms, i.e. vertical integration and subcontracting,
without most of their drawbacks.
Such a strategic network should be in a position
to integrate its information systems and not just to
in Industry 31 (19961293-304
rely on EDI solutions for exchanging data. In this
case the unification of bills of materials and routings
as well as work centers and suppliers may prove
itself to be a powerful tool for managing resources
and planning activities across the network. The char-
acteristic of the extended enterprise is that the work
previously done by a single industrial company is
now split across a network of suppliers and cooperat-
ing partners. In this network the nodes play the role
of work centers and suppliers should have capacity
attributes. Therefore a planning system that treats
work centers and suppliers in a uniform way seems
only natural in this environment.
4. Consequences to shop floor control
Shop floor control which includes shop orders
release, short-term capacity scheduling, dispatching
and production monitoring has always been a do-
main of extreme complexity with respect to both
decision models and transaction processing. The uni-
fication of bills of materials and routings gives here
the opportunity for simpler decision models based on
control principles (e.g. the KANBAN system) sup-
ported by simplified shop floor transaction process-
ing systems.
4.1. Shop floor transaction processing and back-
jlushing
A manufacturing firm can be thought of as com-
prising two factories. One makes products and
the other (the hidden factory) processes transactions
on papers and computer systems. Over time, the
former has been decreasing in relative cost, com-
pared with the latter, so that the consistently rising
overhead costs tend to be the number one concern of
manufacturing managers (Vollmann et al., 1988).
This is of particular concern to small firms who
normally have very low overhead costs and face the
dilemma of significantly increasing those costs in
order to implement a computer-based production
management system.
A major driver for these costs are transactions,
including the ordering, execution and confirmation
of materials moving from one location to another
 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/Computers
(Fig. 7). Included are the costs of personnel in
receiving, shipping, expediting, data entry, data pro-
cessing, accounting, and error follow up. The goal of
the approach presented here is to eliminate transac-
tion and associated costs as far as possible.
The unification of bills of materials and routings
enables the implementation of the backflushing
method by which material, labour and overhead are
consumed automatically by the system when produc-
tion is reported at a user-defined paypoint. Back-
flushing can drastically reduce the number of system
transactions required to report production and main-
tain inventory control.
Backflushing can be performed on a single-level
or multi-level basis as defined by the user at the
component level of each product network (unified
bill of material/routing). This allows inventory man-
agement to maintain tight control over designated
components through direct issue while other compo-
nents are issued automatically through backflushing.
Multi-level backflushing allows the user to process
automatic transactions for as many levels of the
product network as is desirable.
Caplicit:
Job tickets (priorities)
PPC De]n
I
STORES FOREMAN
Fig. 7. Activity model in formal shop floor control systems.
in Indust? 31 (19961 293-304 301
Backflush transactions are processed whenever
production is reported at a paypoint in a products
network. Backflush transactions will also be pro-
cessed for all steps between the paypoint reported
and the previous paypoint defined on the product
network.
Originally backflushing has been implemented as
a key element of repetitive manufacturing manage-
ment systems as is the JIT paradigm. However, batch
production manufacturers are often not suited for the
application of JIT principles due to the lack of a
stable master schedule, difficulties in cutting down
machine set-ups and frequent engineering changes.
In addition they often are not in a position to apply
pressure on their suppliers to make them deliver on a
JIT basis. Therefore we propose here an MRP-based
system which applies the backflushing principle for
specific purposes within the shop-floor transaction
system (Fig. 8).
Problems arise if the flow of production is not fast
enough so that serious deviations may happen be-
tween actual and updated inventory records. This
problem may be solved by choosing as phantom
WORKER PPC Department
STORES
302 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/Computers
WORK ORDER
PPC dept
STORE
Fig. 8. Activity model in the proposed PPC system using unified BOM and routing%
operations for backflushing those that move fast, as
well as by frequently doing physical inventory count-
ing. This is feasible in the small firm due to the
restricted number of materials and the easy-to-
overview and easy-to-grasp (eye management)
characteristics of the environment.
5. Consequences to product costing, engineering
changes and effectivity management
The calculation and build-up of product costs
proceeds upward through the entire bill of material,
beginning at the lowest level material item or com-
ponent. The unification of bills of materials and
routings does not affect the basic principle of cost
build-up, which is to proceed by calculating costs
one level at a time and store the material, labour and
overhead unit cost in their respective fields in the
individual PART (RESOURCE) master record. The
above presented database structure is ideally suited
to the cost roll-up technique (as opposed to the cost
fold-in technique). During cost build-up processing
utilizing the roll-up technique, the appropriate cost
elements of lower level components are added to the
same cost elements of the parent, prior to the calcula-
tion of the incremental costs of the parent (the labour
in Industry 31 (1996) 293-304
Workocder tickets (end period)
PRODUCTNETWORK
STO&
and overhead unit costs of the parent). Therefore, the
accumulated cost to a specific level is available as
well as the incremental costs incurred at a specific
level. This provides a basis for the valuation of
work-in-process inventory, incorporating labour,
overhead, and materials values up to the completion
of each production operation. It also facilitates effi-
ciency reporting with cost breakdown by labour,
overhead, and materials for individual operations.
As far as engineering changes are concerned, we
must first define what constitutes a change from a
bills of materials point of view. If the modification to
a part does not change its form or function (engineer-
ing terms), its is completely interchangeable with the
old part; therefore, the part number need not change
so the structural relationships of the bill of materials
need not change. The best way to determine when a
bill of materials must change is if a part number
must change. Referring to the previous Section 2.3
concerning part numbers and coding conventions, it
becomes clear that with the unified BOM and rout-
ings structure it is organizationally easier to handle
engineering changes since you can use all the tradi-
tional BOM changes and effectivity management
techniques in an integrated way for both components
and operations.
 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/ Computers in Industrv 31 (1996) 293-304
6. Implementation and conclusions
Implementation of the PPC system based on the
above concepts has been undertaken in an actual
industry project. Thle case concerns a medium-sized
repetitive manufacturer of light metal sheet products
(door locks). The proposed simplified system has
been successfully installed on a PC network with
emphasis on the simplified sources/resources data
model, the simultaneous material and capacity re-
quirements planning and the backflushing principle.
The latest information technology of object-oriented
analysis and design facilitated this task. The simpli-
fying approach described in this paper served in a
very satisfactory wa,y the purpose of having a whole
integrated and understandable system installed in the
minimum of time.
During the above project it became apparent that
this type of database modeling resulted in many
benefits in terms of data handling, computer memory
requirements and a very large increase in processing
speed.
The simplification of structure and the reduction
of attributes done by the unification of bills of
materials and routings is achieved through a signifi-
cant increase of code numbers for the resources
(parts and operations) as well an increase of the
structure records. However, this does not play a
significant role in the small and medium-sized manu-
facturing firm due to the reduced range of products
and their simple structure. Therefore, the approach is
most suitable for manufacturers who usually produce
either simple products for specific markets or single
components for the assembly operations of larger
manufacturing firms. In either case, the existence of
simple bills of materials and a restricted number of
manufacturing operations are the norm that permits
the easy unification of bills of materials and routings
with all the advantages that comes with it.
7. For further read.ing
Browne et al., 1988, Burbidge, 1989, 1990, Har-
mon, 1990, Komninos, 1988, Magee and Boodman,
1967, Pappas, 1983, Schonberger, 1982, Sepehri and
Raffish. 1986
303
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304 I.P. Tatsiopoulos/ Computers in Industys 31 11996) 293-304

Ilias P. Tatsiopoulos is an Assistant

Refa, 1974. Produktions - Plunnung und Steuerung, Carl Hanser
Professor in Production Management at
Verlag, 1974.
the Industrial Management and OR Sec-
L.C. Sat-tori, 1988, Manufacturing Information Systems,
tion of the National Technical Univer-
Addison-Wesley, UK.
sity of Athens (NTUA). He has been
A. Scheer, 1988, CIM - Computer Steered Industry. Springer
active for several years as a professional
Verlag, Berlin.
production engineer in both industrial
A. Scheer, 1978, Wirtschafts- und Betriebsi~formatik, Verlag
and consulting firms and he served as a
Moderne Industrie, Miinchen.
Lecturer in management information
R.J. Schonberger, 1982, Japanese Mamfacturiq Techniques,
systems at the Economic University of
The Free Press-McMillan, NY.
Athens. He studied Mechanical and In-
P.E. Sepehri and N. Raffish. 1986, Developing and implement-
dustrial Engineering at NTUA (1978)
ing control systems for repetitive manufacturing, Industrial
and followed post-graduate studies at the TH Aachen (Germany)
Engineering, June, pp. 34-46.
and the University of Lancaster (UK) under a NATO grant. He
I.P. Tatsiopoulos, 1993, Simplified production management soft-
holds a Ph.D. (1983) in Operational Research from the University
ware for the small manufacturing firm, Production Plunning
of Lancaster. He is a member of the Senate of NTUA. Vice-Chair-
and Control, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 17-26.
man of the Greek Institute for Production Management (HMA)
E.A. van Veen, 1992, Mode&g Product Structures by Generic
and member of the Greek State Committee for Governmental
Bills-of-Materials, Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Purchasing.
Th. Vollmann, W. Berry and D.C. Whybark, 1988, Manufirctur-
ing Planning and Control Systems, Irwin, Illinois.
H.P. Wiendhal, 1987, Belastungsorientierte Fertigungssteuerung,
Carl Hanser Verlag, Miinchen.