Kent Outsourcing Services has been suppling consulting expertise to the manufacturing industry for the last 15 years.

KOS has been involved in many ERP implementations providing manufacturing best practice expertise and project management.

For those companies that have implemented an ERP system, but have not realised the benifits promised, KOS has developed a manufacturing planning and control assessment that sets the baseline for any improvements projects initiated.

Stores and warehouses in the supply chain generally have poor real-time accurate inventory records. KOS has developed a methodology to assist company to acheive 100% real-time accuray in the stores/warehouse inventory records, which is a basic requirement for implementing supply chain management initiatives.

A well run, ‘World Class’ store or warehouse is crucial to a successful, well-run organisation. Often, this is an area that doesn’t enjoy much focus in a company's operations and consequently has a great negative impact on the overall material supply chain performance.

Good Supply Chain Management is perceived to be the competitive advantage for those companies wishing to really succeed into the next decade. Without a well-run, accurate, real-time store, successful implementation of the systems necessary to support supply chain management are impossible.

The stores and warehousing assessment is a comprehensive survey of how your store is run compared to how a ‘World Class’ store might be run.

The deliverable is a detailed report on the findings in the following areas. This information can be used to add value to subsequent education programs and projects to improve the operations within the store or warehouse.

The areas and topics covered in the assessment include:

The requirement for real time, virtually 100% accurate inventory records is the cornerstone of any systems implementation. Material Requirements Planning systems will give grossly incorrect planned orders information if stock records are not well above the 95% level.

Business is mostly about moving product efficiently down the supply chain. If you don’t really know what you have and where it is, the exercise of supply chain management and optimisation is futile. It has been estimated that 80% of manager's problems on a daily basis are as a result of inaccurate stock records. With real time, accurate inventory records a prerequisite, companies that are below par in this area are going to find it impossible to plug into the international supply chains that are rapidly emerging around the world.

How can you achieve this basic, but generally elusive, stock accuracy requirement? Over the years, Kent Outsourcing Services has assisted many companies to improve their inventory accuracy and has developed a methodology that has paid off for those that have use it. The methodology is broken down into the following 6 steps spanning a period of 6 to 9 months, depending on the size of the company and management’s commitment to the project.

• Step 1    A stores/warehouse assessment is performed to ascertain the current state of inventory management and control within the company. Information from this assessment would be used to direct the project.
• Step 2    A process of education in stores and stock control is run within the company. The people attending the course not only come from the store/warehouse but include those that interact with the store/warehouse and those responsible for stores and materials management.
• Step 3    The lessons learned during the education are then taken back into the workplace in the form of a project. The project aims to bring up to scratch the areas of weakness found during the assessment. Throughout the project policies, procedures and work instructions are developed to ensure continuing accuracy through the on-going maintenance of the Stores processes.
• Step 4    When better control is obtained in the stores, the employees then return to the classroom for education in stock record accuracy and the cycle counting process.
• Step 5   This education is then taken back into the workplace in the form of a project to ultimately achieve the required accuracy in the inventory records.
• Step 6   At the end of the project the stores assessment is again conducted to ascertain and confirm that improvements have been achieved. As well as highlighting future projects to continuously improve inventory accuracy.

When companies implement MRP II / ERP integrated Financial, Distribution and Manufacturing systems, it is important that they know the money invested is yielding the maximum return.

To ascertain the proper use of the systems implemented, compared to a world class company, requires the use of an audit. This audit should preferably be done by a third party rather than the company itself or the supplier of the software. The normal technique is to rate companies from “A” Class down to “D” Class

Kent Outsourcing Services has, over the years, conducted a number of these assessments and has developed a methodology to perform the assessment. This methodology consists of interviewing various employees within a company and completing a questionnaire per employee. The questionnaire is broken down into 20 areas of the business as follows:

The results of the assessment are analysed and an average, as well as the spread of results from the various interviewees for each of the about 20 categories, are calculated.

Finally, a report is prepared and presented to the Management of the company outlining the findings of the assessment with the company's overall rating. More importantly, the report highlights areas of weakness in the above categories that the company can worked on, in the form of a project, to ultimately improve their overall performance.

It is recommended that initially the assessment is carried out on a six-monthly basis to confirm that improvement is underway. Once a company reaches “B” Class status the assessments could be reduced to once a year.