According to Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, the most important update in its Javelin 2020.0 production planning and control software (www.hexagonmi.com) is focused on tracking, logging and actioning things that have gone wrong.

ERP sales manager Deon Price said: “This is for when a supplier sends sub-standard goods, or when a customer is not happy with parts or products you’ve sent out.

“The new Non-Conformance Report (NCR) addition supports users’ supplier, customer, and internal quality processes by recording and monitoring NCRs with multiple user-defined templates.

“It links NCRs to supplier returns, customer returns, works orders, quarantine stock transactions, defects and scrap.

"There’s also a general option available to create NCRs that are not related directly to specific parts but are required to record a non-conformance.”

A number of updates have been made to Advanced Scheduling. For example, a new function can now consider the acknowledged date of a purchase order item (rather than the due date) and will delay the scheduling of operations until the material is received.

There are also: options to ignore Alternate Ops and Alternate WCs; the addition of an Unscheduled Operations Enquiry that can be printed and exported to Excel; and new metrics for the number of alternative ops, the number of ops scheduled on obsolete WCs, and the number of unscheduled ops.

Furthermore, the Planning Board for Advanced Scheduling now retains the last settings on Number of Days in View and the Highlight option.

Using ‘Max Cycles for Configured Parts’, MRP can now be set to check for Configured Part demand, automatically approve, and repeat MRP to calculate and ‘flush through’ any Configured demand; and Supply v Demand enquiries now consider the Sales Order line.

Meanwhile, a new Sales function sees clarification of Sales Order item dates; the Promise Date is the date the customer expects to receive their goods, while the Sales Order Due Date will be calculated from the Promise Date minus the transport time.

Furthermore, Stock Details are now recorded for Non-Trace parts, making it easier to report against stock, as the data is stored in one table.

Javelin developers have also created a new Country of Origin field on the Goods Receipt note, which defaults to the supplier’s VAT country, and an Overdue Items Enquiry has been added, enabling data to be exported.

The many new functions also include: easier WIP recording; the ability to drag and drop icons; and the ability to create new e-mails via icons.