For manufacturing enterprises, the status of material management is self-evident. Thousands of materials, if there is no unique material code, but only by the material name or other ways as the basis for management, it is difficult to imagine how enterprises can reasonably manage materials.
The name and specification of the material cannot be used as a mark to distinguish the material, and the material with the same name and specification always exists. To realize the scientific management of materials, material coding is the foundation.
In order to achieve unified coding of materials, many enterprises, especially large and medium-sized enterprises, usually have independent material coding institutions, or organize special coding training courses. However, practice often proves that the relevant executive departments are not strictly in accordance with the rules of material coding, and the work does not achieve the expected results. Material coding and enterprise standardization work is also closely related, many enterprises in the implementation of standardization (modular design) work, spent a lot of manpower and material resources, is the backbone of the team, but also to collect drawings, the development of standards, a dry for several years. But in the end, it often ends up in nothing. Material coding is a simple thing, but it is definitely not an easy thing to do well; It is an important and meaningful thing, but it is definitely not something that every business can do well.
First, the function of material coding
Material code is a management tool that uses short words, symbols, numbers or numbers to represent materials, product names, specifications or categories and other related matters. In factories with very simple materials and very few types of materials, it may not matter whether there is a material code or not, but in a factory with hundreds of materials or thousands or tens of thousands of materials, the material code is particularly important. At this time, the material issuance, acceptance, requisition, follow-up, inventory, storage and other work are extremely frequent, and by the material code, the efficiency of various departments is improved, and the data of various materials is transmitted quickly, and the communication of opinions is easier. The functions of the material code are as follows:
1. Enhance the correctness of material data;
All material activities such as material receiving, acceptance, requisition, follow-up, inventory, storage, and recording of materials can be checked by material codes, so the material data is more correct. As for the multiplicity of one thing, the phenomenon of multiple objects or misnamed objects does not occur.
2. Improve the work efficiency of material management;
The existing systematic arrangement of materials, with the material code instead of the text description, the material management is simple and trouble-free, and the efficiency is improved.
3. Conducive to computer management;
After the material code is thoroughly implemented, the computer can be further used for more effective processing to achieve the effect of material management.
4. Reduce material inventory and reduce costs;
Material coding is conducive to the control of material inventory, and at the same time conducive to the prevention of dead materials, and improve the efficiency of material management, so it can reduce the backlog of funds and reduce costs.
5. Prevent the occurrence of material fraud;
Once the material is coded, the material is recorded correctly and quickly, and the material is stored in an orderly manner, which can reduce the occurrence of fraud incidents.
6. Facilitate the use of materials;
Inventory items are coded with correct and uniform names and specifications. It is very convenient for the requisition of the material department and the issuance of the material warehouse.
7. It is convenient to compress the varieties and specifications of materials.
When coding materials, some materials with similar or identical performance can be unified, merged and simplified, and the varieties and specifications of materials can be compressed.
Second, the misunderstanding of material coding
With the continuous advancement of informatization, most Chinese enterprises are currently using CAD and other auxiliary design systems. Due to the requirements of the design management specification, each drawing will have a drawing number, so most enterprises directly use the drawing number as the code of the material. However, using the drawing number as the material code will have the following problems:
1. Since the technical department is not responsible for the management of raw materials, there is no drawing number for raw materials;
2. The drawing number is not unique;
Many companies that use the drawing number as the material code, they have always thought that this is more reasonable. Can the drawing number express the uniqueness of the material? They think, "Yes...... However, a very small number of them cannot. "Why can't a very few of them? The same design drawing can be made of stainless steel or galvanized sheet, and the product made of two different raw materials, can we say that it is the same? But their numbers are exactly the same.
3. The management of the drawing number itself is not standardized;
Most of the R&D departments are not strict about the coding management of the drawing number. Different designers and different design teams follow different coding rules, which leads to the confusion of the subsequent use of drawing numbers, and the drawing numbers are even more inappropriate as material codes. cause
4. The material code is required to express a large amount of information
Due to the lack of experience in material coding, some enterprises often hope to develop a set of universal rules that can know all the conditions of materials when they see the code. This includes material types, attributes, supplier information, and even information about the storage warehouse. These high expectations of coding are caused by a lack of coding experience. The higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. Encoding is encoding, and it can't express too much information that it simply can't carry.
5. Leave the work of formulating coding rules to individual people or departments
Executives are often accustomed to handing over coding to the technical department or a senior employee. This approach ignores the fact that coding is really used most by the material management department, the finance department, not the technical department that sets the coding rules. The formulation of material code should be completed jointly by the technical department, the material management department, and the financial department.
Third, the principle of material coding
The material code must conform to the principle of the material code, and the reasonable material code must have the following basic principles: ★ simplicity ★, classification, expansion, ★ integrity ★, singularity ★, consistency ★, scalability ★, organization, ★ adaptability to computer management ★, and sufficiency.
1. Simplicity
The purpose of coding is to simplify the material and facilitate the management of the material, if the code is too complicated, it violates the purpose of the code. Therefore, the material code should be simple and clear in the application of character numbers or numbers, which can save the time and procedures of reading, filling in and transcribing, and can reduce the chance of errors.
2. Classification expansion
The material is complex, the material code is subdivided after the large classification, if the Arabic numeral decimal system is adopted, then each paragraph can only have up to ten subdivided items, if the English alphabet is used, then each paragraph has 26 subdivision items, but there are too many subdivision items, it is difficult to find, and the subdivision items are too few, the classification is too slow, and the classification subdivision items are usually five to nine better. For example, when the Arabic numeral decimal system is used and there are 18 items, the following methods can be used for classification and expansion.
3. Integrity
In the material code, all materials should have the material code attributed, so that the material code can be complete. If some items cannot find the assigned material code, it is clear that the material code lacks completeness.
The generation of new products and new materials can easily destroy the integrity of the material code. Therefore, whenever there is a new material generated, a new material code should be given, and the new material is not coded, the procurement department shall not engage in procurement, even if there is no material code of the new material purchased, the warehouse department or the accounting department finds that the material purchase order is missing the material code, that is, the procurement department should be asked to fill in the material code, otherwise it will not be put into storage, not paid. This ensures the integrity of the material code.
4. Singularity
The singleness of the material code means that a material code can only represent a material, the same material can only find a material code, and there is never a material with several material codes, or a material code with several materials, generally, as long as the physical or chemical properties of the material have changed, as long as the material is to be stored in the warehouse, it must be assigned a code, for example, such as a part to go through stamping forming, drilling, painting three processes can be completed. If the three processes of the material are completed in the same workshop, without changing the processing unit, that is, drilling is carried out immediately after stamping and forming, followed by painting, and there is no warehousing and outbound processing in the middle, then the material can take a code. If the three operations of the material are not completed in the same workshop, and the sequence is stamping, warehousing, picking, drilling, warehousing, picking, painting, and warehousing, in order to distinguish the three states of the material in inventory management, different material codes must be taken. For example, the three codes of 3000A, 3000B and 3000C represent three materials with different processing states.
5. Singleness
Material code should be unified and consistent, such as the classification of years as the standard, it should be used all the time, in the middle of the way can not change the place of origin or surname to classify, if you want to do so must be segmented or graded.
6. Elasticity
Material coding should take into account the future development of new products and changes in product specifications and the occurrence of material expansion or change. The flexibility of reserved materials can not only be arranged for the current status of materials to be coded, otherwise when new materials are generated, there will be new materials without a number.
7. Organizational
According to the system of its code, the material code is organized and arranged in an orderly manner, so that a material account card or data can be found from the material code at any time. The organization of material coding can save unnecessary trouble for material management.
8. Adapt to computer management
The application of computers has been more popular, so the convenience of entry must be considered when coding, such as coding as short as possible, less use of other symbols, such as '#', '-', '*', etc.
9, Sufficiency
There must be sufficient quantities of words, symbols or numbers in the material codes to represent all individual materials and to meet the actual needs of future material expansion, so as to avoid the absence of numbers in the case of special materials. Otherwise, the material system will be destroyed, and it will be time-consuming and misleading.
10. Memorability
Without prejudice to the above nine principles, the material code should be made in easy-to-remember words, symbols or numbers, or be suggestive and associative. However, this principle is a secondary principle, and if the above nine principles are all in place and the material code of this principle is lacking, it is still an excellent material code.
Fourth, the skills of material coding
1. The coding rules should reflect the material category as much as possible.
The material category allows us to have a direct judgment on the category of the material. For example, we use mobile phones every day, and if we see the number in the 139 segment, we know that it is a mobile call. The principle of division of major categories is often: the first code: finished products, semi-finished products, raw materials, auxiliary materials, low-value consumables, mainly for financial use; The second code: the real category, according to the different situations of the enterprise specific formulation.
2. The coding needs to be of moderate length.
According to human memory habits, 7-13 bit encoding is more reasonable.
3. Try not to use codes with special significance.
The original intention of many material codes is to express the material clearly and clearly, such as coding steel plates into GB, which is simple and easy to understand. However, with the increase of material types, the materials coded in GB are no longer limited to "steel plates", and "pens" are named after GB.
4. Avoid using characters that are difficult to communicate and distinguish.
The text represents the vast and profound culture of the Chinese nation, and Pinyin is known as one of the most complex characters in the world. If you use the phonetic alphabet alone, such as G and J, it will be difficult for many people to distinguish between them because of the non-standard pronunciation. In addition, the lowercase letter L is no different from the number 1 when printed, and the O is no different from the number 0 after it is printed, and so on. In the process of formulating encoding rules, we try to avoid using these characters that are easy to confuse.
5. Do not encode information that may change.
What is the information that is subject to change? To take the simplest example, many enterprises now set the employee coding rules as: department number + serial code. The author believes that this is the most unreasonable coding, if the employee has a personnel change or a change of position, the code will not be able to accurately express the department he is in. If employees change their personnel and positions frequently, coding becomes a problem for the company
Fifth, how to effectively implement the material code
Many enterprises have spent a lot of manpower, material and financial resources to develop a set of scientific, in line with the actual situation of the material coding system, just like other thick management system documents they have formulated, are locked into the dark filing cabinet, only for use in the relevant quality system certification. Of course, when a peer comes to visit, he will often show it off.
Establishing a sound material coding rule is only the first step in the work of material coding. How to make the coding rules formulated in the enterprise really be implemented, improve and solve the technology, property management, finance and other departments of the independent management, multiple sets of codes coexist, a variety of material titles confusing and other enterprise management problems, is the most substantial step in the material coding work. There are two ways to effectively implement the material coding work of enterprises:
1. Implement a software management system
The implementation of ERP and other information software systems is the easiest and most effective way to solidify the material code in the system and achieve mandatory implementation. The ERP system will automatically generate the code according to the material coding rules formulated by the enterprise. The ERP system has convenient query, sorting and other functions, which can also allow employees to quickly experience the benefits brought by unified coding, and then actively cooperate with the implementation of coding. Reasonable coding rules combined with the query and sorting functions in ERP and PDM systems will have a direct positive impact on the implementation of enterprise standardization.
2. Set up a special person to be responsible for coding
If the enterprise does not have the conditions for the implementation of ERP, PDM and other information systems, the only way to implement the material coding rules is to set up a special person to control the material code by formulating the material control process. During the execution of the process, the principle of unique export of material code is strictly observed.
The material coding rules formulated by the enterprise can not be truly effectively implemented, and the reason is that there must be something not in place in the setting of the implementation organization and the implementation of the material coding process. Therefore, it is an effective way to set up a special person to be responsible for the material.