Tasks Planning and Load in Design Department

[former_member701305]

Dear All,

SAP has been chosen as company ERP and until now it is adopted in production, inventory, purchasing and accounting. There is a lot of information in internet how to use SAP in as mentioned areas and I could understand the basic idea and to have some overview how things work. Now we have to do the same but in Design Department. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any information in internet about this.

I assume that same logic could be applied. We can use some special material type “Studies”, which has routing (tasks) and BOM composed of other “Studies” which has to be done before in order to “build” (accomplish) current study. Idea is when we start order for “Project Studies” to have work distribution between all Design Teams (EL, Piping, Steel structure, Interior design, HVAC etc.) According as distributed load in those Design Teams (Work centers) we should be able to plan needed capacity and if needed to subcontract part of work in disciplines and periods when we cannot cope with charge internally. Here are the problems where I’m stuck.

1. We cannot know in advance how many drawings we should produce, we just know how many drawing packages we should produce.
2. Not all studies are accomplished with drawings for example there are calculation reports, which has to be done before drawing production to start
3. Once we know the load we should subcontract charge which we cannot do internally. I that case I see two options:

• Put subcontractor as “Work center” where subcontracted “Studies” are assigned. Advantage which I see here is that project wise, will be easier to:

i. Subcontractor to synchronize with our studies

ii. Do progress reporting

iii. Easily follow delays

iv. Plan next design stages which depend on subcontracted design.

Here I don’t know how those expenses will be attached to project accounting, subcontractor PO, invoicing etc.

• Put subcontractor as “Vendor” supplying “Studies”. Advantage I see here are:

i.Manage RFQ and Purchasing order process

ii.Invoicing and payment will be naturally flawless.

Here I am not sure how progress will be updated and how to attach next internal stages to subcontractor delivery.

I know that as described above is a huge subject, which cannot be covered by just some answers in the forum. I will be grateful if you can:

• Let me know if my understanding of basic principles is correct
• Which way I should choose in point 3 or there is something in between?
• Are there sources where I can see examples of Design Department organization via SAP especially in the part of planning and capacity?

Thank you in advance!

With my best regards

KBV

[Ritz · Accepted solution]

kbv,

I really found it interesting how you are planning to use SAP to implement it.

Here I am not sure how progress will be updated and how to attach next internal stages to subcontractor delivery.

if you have a Bill of material containing various studies to complete a course , these BOM components could be assigned to routing opertions and after completion of each operation you can post a confirmation. Which could represent the progress of the study.

Thanks

RD

[Ritz]

kbv

Tags are ok , my suggestion is you will get more favorable response if you could ask one or two features at at time and assign relevant tags to those. If there are many questions in one post people either skip it or just reply on 1 or 2 points.

Thanks

RD

[former_member701305]

Dear Ritesh,
Thank you for your answer and for your time!
As it seems now my idea could work and I've started with mock-up in SAP test space.
Can you please just advise me about chosen for this post Assigned Tags, are they correct or I should refine them?

Thank you in advance!

Best regards

Krasimir