Hi, I’m Rebecca from Unleashed Software, and today I’m going to show you one practical way
that you can use Just In Time manufacturing in your business.
You may know that Just In Time, or JIT, manufacturing comes from car makers in Japan.
It's based on the original 14 rules of The Toyota Way.
And today I’m going to focus on just one of those rules – using pull systems.
And we’ll show you how to put this into practice.
So what does ‘pull production’ mean?
It means you make products and order inventory in response to making sales –
literally pulling the work through your production line.
And that’s a very, very efficient way of manufacturing,
because you’re only spending money on the stock that you need.
Let me show you now how that’s done using a pretend jam-making business
that I've set up in my Unleashed account.
Okay, we’ll start by adding a sales order.
I'm doing this one manually –
let's pretend they've just called me to give me their order.
You can also have these pulled through automatically from your B2C store or a B2B ordering portal.
The product they've requested is a manufactured product that we don't have ready-made
and don't have to stock for – you can see my availability is zero.
When I add this order, Unleashed will tell me that I can't complete the order as I don't have the stock for it.
Now, being low on stock can seem like a bad thing,
but as long as I have suppliers that I trust and deliver on time it can be a huge advantage.
Why? Well, remember my pretend business here is making jam,
and my stock will have a really short shelf life. So if I order too much stock in advance
there's a risk it might go off before we get a chance to use it. So this is a really efficient way to work.
It’s not just food manufacturers who use Just In Time.
Warehouse space is expensive – as are the staff to run them,
so using this pull production method is a really great way smart manufacturers keep costs low.
So let’s look at how I use the software to pull the sales order through our factory,
ordering the stock we need Just In Time to fulfil our order.
You can see the components in this list
that I need to order to finish my assembly.
I can create a purchase order for these items directly from this report.
You can choose to select components from different suppliers,
but for this example I'm going to order all of the items required to finish my assembly from one supplier.
My purchase order is now automatically generated with all of the components I need.
I then place this order and email it direct to my supplier from within Unleashed.
Then I wait for my stock to arrive.
Now, the great thing here is that I’ve got all the right integrations set up within Unleashed.
My sales can come through from my Shopify storefront, or my Unleashed B2B portal –
and the financials are being sent through to my accounting software,
in this case Xero.
Including the purchase orders that I’m sending off to my suppliers.
Anyway once you have received the stock in your warehouse, we need to confirm this in Unleashed.
So on this screen, I can receipt the goods in –
I’m confirming the stock that arrived is the stock I have ordered.
When I click ‘complete’ the stock is now in Unleashed and the bill is passed through for me to reconcile in Xero.
Now when I go back to the assembly, I have the stock available to complete it.
If you batch or serial track that is the point you would add these to the assembly.
When I click ‘complete’ the finished item is now in stock, ready to complete my sales order.
And if I go back to the sales order I can now ship this item to my customer and complete the order.
Again – this will automatically generate an invoice in my accounting package if I've chosen to integrate.
So there it is. I hope that’s helped you understand how Just in Time manufacturing works.
It’s basically a way of keeping costs down by keeping your stock on hand low –
ordering new stock responsively, when an incoming sales order pulls production through your factory.
Now of course that's just a small part of what Unleashed software can do.
So if you'd like to see more there's a link here to a webinar
that will explain how it works for sales, reporting and warehousing
as well as integration with tools like Xero, Amazon and Shopify, and many more.
But for now, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.