Production Applications of BellHawk

BellHawk Systems provides complete Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) that are specifically designed for mid-sized manufacturing plants that manufacture, process or assemble products in batches.

The BellHawk software includes the following production tracking capabilities:

1. Tracking the receipt of raw materials.
2. Tracking job status in real–time.
3. Tracking the picking of materials for jobs
4. Tracking the consumption of materials on jobs.
5. Tracking work–in–progress as it moves from production operation to operation.
6. Tracking the QC status of raw, WIP and finished goods
7. Tracking intermediate materials and finished goods produced by jobs.
8. Tracking materials returned to inventory from jobs.
9. Tracking labor and machine time expended on job steps.
10. Tracking scrap and rework.
11. Tracking the status of machines including setup time, run time and down time.
12. Tracking quantities of raw, intermediate and finished goods on hand.
13. Tracking production of finished goods.
14. Costing work–in–process and finished goods.

BellHawk can also track and predict available inventory based on physical inventory, open purchase orders and jobs to be run. BellHawk can then perform material planning and job scheduling based on sales orders and forecasts.

BellHawk can also track and control the replenishment of production KanBans as well as the picking of kits for production jobs.

BellHawk is especially valuable in those situations where defect tracking and recall minimization is required, such as in food processing, OTC pharmaceutical processing, medical, aerospace and automotive device manufacturing. Please click here for more details.

Barcode scanning is used to record the job, labor, machine and material transactions. This scanning is performed on PCs equipped with corded or cordless scanners and/or on mobile computers with integral barcode scanners. The job, material, labor and equipment tracking data is stored in the BellHawk database where it can be viewed in real–time by managers, supervisors and customer service people.

Bills of Materials (BOMs) and routes can be entered using BellHawk screens and stored within the BellHawk database. Alternately they can be imported from an external ERP or manufacturing control system. Similarly work orders can be initiated from within BellHawk or can be imported from an external system. These BOMs and routes can be used to print out barcoded travelers which are scanned to record job status as well as labor, materials and machine time consumed on jobs.

Some of the special features of a BellHawk tracking solution include:

1. Ability to work with multiple units of measure, including automated conversions between different measure types.

2. Mistake proofing by warning employees if they attempt to use the wrong materials or materials that have not passed QC inspection.

3. Ability to track multiple products processed as a group and employees working on multiple jobs at the same time.

4. Capture of activity based costing data for products and jobs, including the ability to feed labor, material and equipment resource usage cost data to ERP and accounting systems.

5. Ability to integrate with process control and test equipment to capture process and test parameters as part of the complete tracking and traceability record.

6. Ability to integrate with weighing scales, fixed station barcode and RFID scanners, and automated counting equipment.

BellHawk MES solutions make extensive use of technologies such as barcode scanning and wireless mobile computing to deliver solutions that are  easy to use by employees who have limited computer literacy. Through the use of its BSAF (pronounced be-safe) store and forward technology, BellHawk is able to support mobile data collection operations in environments with limited and intermittent communications. This enables reliable operations in difficult industrial environments such as foundries, welding shops, clean-rooms, laboratories and molding operations.

For more information about how BellHawk Systems can help you with your specific work-in-process and inventory tracking solution, please click on the link below: