Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1275152
48 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2020 Matties: In your inventory management, with a very short window of visibility, how critical or how engaged are your component suppliers in your system? Ghalili: With critical component suppliers, we are very engaged because we do a lot of fore- casts, and we constantly work with them. The way we operate on that is our sales order man- ager forms a team. The team sits together, makes forecasts and demands, and puts that into the ERP system. Once that happens, based on the MRP, purchasing works with the sup- pliers to pull or push the material shipment. There's a lot of discussion that goes back and forth between the buyers and the suppliers daily. Matties: I would think that your team must be in almost constant communication with your suppliers. Ghalili: Yes. Matties: What other challenges do you find in inventory management? Ghalili: My major challenge for inventory has always been visibility. Again, we had custom- ers in the previous life that would give us one-year projections, and that was good. Our advantage now is that we're able to attract customers since we are able to manage the complexity of inventory. Our daily challenge is still what it was before: How do we balance customer requirements and our inventory? This is a constant battle. I don't think that has gone away with just making it an electronic system. Matties: But with the electronic system, you've been able to at least preserve more cash and not have it tied up in inventory. Ghalili: Definitely. Again, without an elec- tronic system, we would not be able to be in this business. It would be a $10–12-million inventory you have to maintain to just feed these customers. And then the team of peo- ple involved—right now, we have 8–10 people in purchasing—we would have to maintain at least 20–25 buyers to go through that system. I don't know if it would be possible without an electronic system. Matties: When you look at your jobs being released onto the floor and your daily work schedule, is that done through your computer system, or are you manually loading your shop up with the day's work? Ghalili: We have a planner who goes into the ERP system and pulls out a dashboard that gives them all the materials that are ready, as well as the customer requirements for that part. That planner also works with the buyers to see when the components are coming in, and they plan and lay the production schedule based on that. Matties: It's done with a human touch. Ghalili: Absolutely. It's the same thing with the forecasting. People make projections and fore- casts, and then put that forecast or demand into the system. Then, MRP runs it and says what you need to buy and when. Matties: Do you see a time where you would use a computerized AI system to balance the workload on a daily basis, releasing the jobs in the right order to optimize your capacity? Ghalili: Yes. I imagine that at one point, we would look at an AI system for job releases. At present, we have an SPI, screen printer, and then AOI. We are trying to integrate those sys- tems so that our inspection system SPI and AOI gives a signal to the printer how to adjust There's a lot of discussion that goes back and forth between the buyers and the suppliers daily.