The following is a brief overview of the areas of DMS that you need to consider when getting started.  It is recommended that before you start entering your data your setup a prototype using the system supplied test data, or a sub set of your data, and play around with DMS to get familiar with its functionality.  You can keep your test data separate in a dataset such as “Sample Data” and then create a live dataset when you are ready to start adding your own “live” data.

Terms & Settings

Terms and Settings enable you to define your own terms in DMS, setup masked input for certain fields, and to hide fields that you do not intend on using.

Departments

Departments are used to categorize your resources.  That is, you can assign a resource to a defined department.

Type of work

Before you set up resources you should set up at least one “Type of Work” profile. This will help you establish your Resources “typical” capacity. You can always go back and establish more profiles at anytime as required. Type of work profiles can be used to quickly generate overtime schedules and perform “what if” scenarios

Resources

Resources are the work stations or work centers that perform work.  Before you can add operations for a job, you need to define what resources these operations will use.

Resource Pools

Resource pools are a way of categorizing your resources.  Whereas a resource can only belong to one department, a resource can be a member of any number of pools.  Resource pool categories are not only important for scheduling but also cane be used for reporting purposes.

Job States

Job states are a very important part of DMS.  They are used to assign different attributes to a job. You can define your own job states or choose from the standard list. The state of a job affects how it will be handled by DMS.

Manufacturing Orders

Manufacturing Orders can be seen as the driver to other manufacturing areas of DMS.  It can be used for quick job edits, to filter data and view a sub set of jobs, to sort jobs, and to access the following areas:

1. Manufacturing Order (job details) to add, edit, or delete jobs
2. Multiple Jobs Editor to perform multiple changes on one or more jobs at a time
3. Job Status Updating to update a job’s operation(s) with work performed
4. Graphs
5. Reports and Displays
6. Export Jobs to write job data to an external file.

Operation Statuses

Operation statuses enable you to define your own statuses to be used for operations.  You can use the default operations statuses (such as “I” for in process, “C” for complete, etc.) or you can define and use your own statuses

Standard Operation Notes

Standard Operation Notes is an optional feature that enables you to setup standard written procedures that are typically added to describe the steps of an operation.

Status Reasons

Status Reasons are optional and enable you to setup standard reasons for measurements of successes or improvements of a job’s planning, your manufacturing process, etc.

Employees

If you are going to report work by employee, you need to define the employees.

User Fields

User fields are fields you wish to define to DMS that are not part of the standard job or operation. 

Scheduling

Scheduling is the process of taking your jobs and applying them onto the resources.  You need to define certain options before you run a schedule.

Importing Orders

Importing Orders enables you to load jobs via predefined file formats.  When you import orders into DMS, you should setup what to do if an order already exists by defining Retain and Merge Settings.

Import Job Updates

Import Job Updates enables you to import the status of jobs and their operations via an import file.