How do you deal with remnants?

I am looking for some ideas for how to handle remannt tracking, both in software and in the warehouse. This problem seems out of aligment with a lot of ERP systems, so I'm looking for ideas on how people handle it in their software systems, and also how people track remnants in the warehouse, both with software and physical systems (warehouse racking, etc).

Looking forward to hearing everyone's ideas!

Thanks,

Jonathan

are you talking about rems, as in drops, or extra pieces of material?
If I need to make 6 parts and I order 8 blanks, all 8 get received in. Then 6 get made and the other two get tagged and go into stock.
If they are just drops that arnt big enough to make another part, they usually get tossed onto the tooling rack.

Yes, I am talking more about drops. Some we keep in stock to be used for future jobs. And some get scrapped, per our scrap guidelines. I am curious what software solutions are being used to keep track of the drops/remnants that stay in stock.

rosenjon said:

Yes, I am talking more about drops. Some we keep in stock to be used for future jobs. And some get scrapped, per our scrap guidelines. I am curious what software solutions are being used to keep track of the drops/remnants that stay in stock.

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Microsoft excel would be good enough. Depending on how good at it you are, you can make a spreadsheet that looks as good as software you would buy. I know of some high dollar software that is basically excel running in the background.

rosenjon said:

This problem seems out of aligment with a lot of ERP systems

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Software companies tend to be pretty good about nickel and dime-ing with regards to add-on features and customizations. It's kind of their lifeblood.

General functionality with ERPs is that they can track inventory, e.g. 144" of 1" square 6061 bar stock, but they can't differentiate between a single full-length bar vs. QTY-144 1" cubes.

Our preferred metals supplier, EMJ, is very good about tracking rems. At any given time, they can tell me availability of any and all rems for specified bar size, and the locations of each across the country. But I would be surprised if they didn't have a lot of custom programming done on their ERP system.

Paper and pencil ? Or do you keep it online in a Google docs so you can check it from home when some one calls you on a weekend ? you could even be able to share the list via google drive as a look at and cant edit (seems like another full time job on the side)

I treat them as REMS NOT INVENTORY ! I plan on ordering new stock for every job and charge the customer for the cost of the materials. (you would still charge for your rem right?)

Put REMS on the shelf/rack by material type and then from smallest to biggist and when the tax man comes and asks me about it I will say after so long I need to PAY some one to come truck them off to get rid of it so they are sorted.The rems are my customers and they did not pick them up with the jobs. A lot of rems are smaller and cant be used anyway on most jobs. Did you keep track of the certs?

I am saying and doing this because of a story my father told me. My father had a tax guy go into his shop and my father told the tax guy that any left over is his customers that they have not picked up and are rems that he would need to pay to get rid of.The tax guy said okay and went to the guy that owned a shop literately in the same complex on the same day. That neighbor said he paid good money for his materials and the material is still worth money and so he keeping it for future use. The end of the story is the neighbor was taxed as having inventory. Or so the neighbor claimed to my father.

If your keeping it and tracking it like inventory I would be interested on how you handle your taxes as far as accounting it and paying on it as inventory and if not how do you plan to get away with not paying inventory tax on it? Just a small fish in a big pond so you never will get an audit or a divorce where a lawyer will walk in and take notes? (also happened to my father)

I am not trying to derail the thread I just wanted to give you some food for thought if you are not a wanting materials as your taxable inventory.

Rems what a pain, O.K. so you start saving larger carbon /stainless or aluminum drops.
before long there's pallets stacked all over the storage yard, unless it's hi dollar material or a large drop/rem it's a major pain to keep inventory of smaller material.
Then is it large enough, correct grade etc,etc. now you got someone out there searching in the storage yard tripping over pallets looking for that particular rem.
Now it's buried 4 pallets deep and now there's 2 people out there with a forklift, sorry screw that, I still save rems/drops but their value must exceed the labor and time required to store and retrieve them. Just my 2 cents.

Tekla. You are in real money for this, so I guess it depends on scale. It also reads cut list, makes nest, orders steel for you if you want. Serious money.

rosenjon said:

Yes, I am talking more about drops. Some we keep in stock to be used for future jobs. And some get scrapped, per our scrap guidelines. I am curious what software solutions are being used to keep track of the drops/remnants that stay in stock.

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It's actually a good question. But in most cases it would likely be waste of time to seriously deal with it. Unless its something like dental screws and implant bases and are all made of the same grade titanium and probably same diameter bars with swiss machine, so there's always a nice and considerably lengthy remnant, that could be used on simpler lathe in less automated fashion.
Or if you plan the cuttings of material workpieces accordingly, having in mind that remnants will be something of exact size for another job.
As I see it. This would only be useful in some specific scenarios.

So I've used OpenSource ERP software Dolibarr, there was a possibility to create materials and products, so you would define how many products per piece of material. But still so many things goes out of hand and you never exactly know how much material machine setup gonna require to sacrifice...
I think it's computationally too complex for humans to do this properly in a useful fashion.

But again if it would be same swiss lathe eating same titanium all the time, Bar feeder dropbox could be attached to some conveyor belt and the remnants could be measured and counted by some relatively primitive machine.

Best solution we've had is just good work habits.

1. Always be sure drops or left-over stock are marked as to what they are. If it's A2, but was never marked, it might as well be 1018.
2. When pulling material for a job, even if you bought material for it, check the drops first and see what you can use (realistically). It's better to have 1 extra 3 foot bar of material than 50 little drops.
3. Whoever is cutting material, pay attention to the jobs you see. If you KNOW you can use a little 2" drop of bar for a specific job, sure save it, but if you don't know and your buddy next to you doesn't know, put it on top of the scrap pile. If you're doing more work than you can remember, then yes software or a spread sheet helps with this, but it only helps so long as it's maintained and everyone keeps up with it.
4. Annually go through the drops and cull the heard. We do lots of one-offs and short run jobs that we might not see for a few years, so we like to save little bits "just in case," but if you've been sitting on it for years and can't put a potential job on it, you have to consider how much storage space and time organizing you want to devote to it.

Wow, for those of us who do not do this for a living, I sure wish I had access to your remnants, especially if they were local :-)

I either write on the blank if it's big enough, or I tape those tags with strings on them onto the bars.

If stainless, the heat# may be stamped into one end of the bar, so - when you are cutting your last bar, try to remember this and keep the end with the heat# on it in the rack and burn up the other part.

I have tags hanging from my rack that emulate a mess of wind chimes if a breeze blows through that far, just much quieter...


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