The fabrication industry includes metal fabrication and fiberglass fabrication.  Metal fabrication is the process that changes the geometry of metal by molding, smelting or refining it.  The main processes associated with this industry are metal fabrication, metal preparation and finishing.

Metal Fabrication
Metal fabricators supply a variety of proprietary parts and components to the manufacturing industry. Products range from highly-engineered products, such as HVAC units, with small production runs, to high volumes of make-to-stock products, such as bolts and screws. A variety of processes involved in the manufacture of complex metal parts include shaping, metal removal, coating, finishing, heat treating, welding, soldering, brazing and adhesive joining.

Examples of metal fabrication products include structural metals, metal doors, sash, metal coating services, screw machine products, industrial fasteners, valves, pipe fittings, automotive stamping, bolts, nuts, rivets and washers, metal cans, shipping containers, cutlery, hand tools and general hardware, heating equipment, plumbing fixtures, paper clips, car bodies, spiral staircases, bearings, electrical components, wire and cable, spikes, tubes and pipes, aerospace, and automotive components.  These products start out as metal stock that fabricators bend, punch, drill, grind, thread and cut to produce various shapes.

The metal fabrication process can vary a great deal, depending on the material being machined, the production rate, the desired geometry and any other part or product physical requirements.

Fiberglass Fabrication
Rigid fiberglass products are manufactured through the molding of glass fibers, and/or thermoset plastics to produce fiberglass, fiberglass reinforced plastics and composites. Rigid fiberglass products are very durable and corrosion resistant. Examples of rigid fiberglass products are canoe or boat hulls, and other products include furniture, corrosion resistant equipment, bath and bath fixtures, other building materials, heat exchanger components, large storage tanks, truck body and airplane body and components, sporting equipment, ductwork, piping, fans, and machinery housings. Examples of non-rigid fiberglass products include strands and yarns used in insulation, woven mats and other products.

Industry Challenges

• It is largely dependent on the demands of other industries
• There is a short response time to changing product mix and demand and customer specifications
• Product development life cycles can be shortened by collaboration with customers on the design and engineering of products
• There is a need for customer service
• Documentation and activities must be managed and tracked
• Production schedules must be synchronized with those of customers
• Overcapacity and cost must be minimized
• There is a need for long term cost management and containment
• Waste must be reduced
• Productivity must be improved
• Resources must be optimized
• Bottlenecks must be removed
• There is a need for quality management
• Accuracy of job costs must be increased
• There is a need for multi-dimensional inventory and lot control

How SYSPRO Can Help

Customer Service Management
The SYSPRO CRM suite of applications will enable manufacturers to increase revenues and client satisfaction through optimal client management. Tightly integrated to the SYSPRO distribution and manufacturing suites, the CRM module will enable the manufacturer to decrease order cycle times and deliver product when required. Real time information in CRM enables users to proactively anticipate the requirements of the client.

Advanced Planning and Scheduling
The SYSPRO APS system provides a graphical view of the shop floor in real-time and measures productivity at the closest point to manufacture. It provides a simple and efficient means of coordinating the supply chain through better advanced planning, scheduling and visibility over production. A concise, tactical overview of production schedules and workloads by work center, day and job enables managers to more easily identify potential problem areas and schedule jobs in accordance with available resources and promised delivery dates.

Lot Traceability
The SYSPRO Lot Traceability module is designed to provide full traceability at transactional level for items which could cause loss of life or limb if conformance to quality standards is not adhered to. Companies in industries such as electronics, aeronautics, defense, food, pharmaceutical, motor vehicles and building would typically require the Lot Traceability module. This module records material movement through the receiving, manufacturing, assembly, inspection, stocking and final dispatch stages. The integration with SYSPRO's other modules permits full upward and downward traceability through all inventory transactions. The module traces product life cycle from raw materials to final products.

Requirements Planning
The Requirements Planning module is the focus of the manufacturing and material resource planning system. The objective of requirements planning is to create realistic purchasing and production schedules, optimize stock holdings and identify capacity constraints in a multi-site, multi-warehouse environment. The module assists with the planning of materials and production capacity required to meet demand and identifies levels of usage of critical resources for rough-cut capacity planning.  It allows for the easy creation of build schedules from Master Production Schedule (MPS) suggestions and the shop floor, and it suggests purchasing, production and transfer schedules to satisfy demand. Features of this module include variable planning horizons, dynamic capacity profiling and load leveling. This is a bucketless system. The calculation is regenerative and infinite, and can be fed into Forward Finite Scheduling.

Work in Progress
The Work in Progress module enables you to accurately control costs of work orders currently in progress. Material usage and labor can be posted in real time and in batch mode. It also enables variance reporting to be produced between estimated costs and actual costs of each job. Work orders may be added for stocked items (with a bill of materials), stocked items without a bill of materials or non-stocked items. These work orders can create a bill of jobs for all relevant sub-assemblies down the BOM chain. Labor transactions can be posted through kit issues, manually or imported into the system from a data collection interface. Material allocations can be issued to a job through kit issues or manually and optionally allow for the substitution of a material allocation when performing kit issues.
Bill of Materials
A bill of material (BOM) is a listing of all the sub-assemblies, intermediate parts, and raw materials that go into a parent assembly showing the quantity of each (including scrap) required to make a parent assembly. It is used in conjunction with Requirements Planning to determine the items for which purchase requisitions and production orders must be released. A bill of material may also be called the ‘formula’ or ‘recipe’. A routing is a set of information detailing the method of manufacture of a particular item. It includes the operations to be performed, their sequence, the various work centers to be involved, and the standards for set-up and run time. The routing can also include information on tooling, operator skill levels, operation instructions, testing requirements, etc. Synonyms for routings are bill of operations, instruction sheet, manufacturing data sheet, operation chart, operation list, operation sheet, routing sheet. Bill of materials has a wide variety of uses for a manufacturing company.
Work in Progress Inspection
Manufacturing Inspection allowing for inspecting, rework, scrap or receiving in as an alternate lower grade product or into a "seconds" warehouse.