For years, repetitive manufacturing industries have been applying many of the principles in Just-in-Time philosophy. They have established balanced production lines that depend on a steady flow of material to each work station. They schedule production in daily or weekly rates rather than in discrete shop order lots. They track finished inventory by work center rather than by job. They typically backflush stock balances (decrement stock balances upon completion of specific manufacturing steps rather than issued at the beginning of each production run).

Costing is typically based upon a daily rate or hourly rate rather than being associated with specific shop orders. 

Repetitive manufacturers use MRP II software adaptable to their environments

in the following key areas:

▪ Product definition

▪ Inventory tracking

▪ MRP/Master Scheduling

▪ Shop Floor Control

▪ Purchasing

▪ Costing

Just-in-Time (JIT) is a management philosophy that focuses on minimizing the resources necessary to add value to your products and to operate your factory in ways that eliminate waste. Resources are labor, materials, equipment, space, and time. Waste is anything that does not add value to your products. Moving work-in-process from place to place, stacking and sorting, investing capital in large work-in-process and raw material inventories, inspecting materials at your vendors' sites, and tying up warehouse space with finished goods are all activities that add cost, not value, to your products. 

JIT is a process that reduces lead time. JIT does not replace an MRP, an inventory program, a scheduling technique to bypass your Master Schedule, or a materials management project. JIT is the never-ending commitment of everyone, from top management to your workers on the floor, to maximize your effectiveness through continuous, incremental improvements.

OPERATIONS: Update, Cancel or Remove Outbound Order Lines

FINANCE: Currency Differences Accounts

TECHNOLOGY: Advantages of Data Replication

Instead of sharing tables through logical linking, you can replicate table content between companies. This approach allows certain non-key attributes of a record to vary by company. For example, if you replicate bills of materials rather than sharing them, each company can associate a different warehouse with the same bill of material. This way, the bills of materials are consistent across companies, while the warehouses can differ.

Replication also enables selective availability of records in other companies. For instance, when replicating items, you might limit which items are available in a sales company based on their item group, only including end items. You can further refine replication to specific subsets, such as particular item groups.

Keep in mind that replication requires any referenced tables to be either replicated or shared as well.