Traditional MRPII system logic assumes that inventory is available to satisfy any customer requirement. As a result, it does not allow for the separation or allocation of certain materials, parts, or works-in-process for customer-specific use.
The ability to maintain separate customer identification or customer lots within the general population of parts and orders has traditionally been used in contract and project manufacturing environments. However, in today's customer-oriented world, this identification approach is very useful in providing clear identification and availability of materials for specific customer demand- even in an Assemble-to-Order, Make-to-Stock or Repetitive Manufacturing environment.

What is Seiban?

Separation of inventories is not uncommon in Japan where an identifying number is attached to all parts, materials, purchase orders and manufacturing orders (all supply orders) that identify them as belonging to a particular customer, job, project or product line. This identifying number is called Seiban, from the Japanese work Sei meaning "manufacturing" (or production) and Ban meaning "number."
The result is like having separate Material Requirements Planning (MRP) within the overall MRP process. In actual practice, there are separate MRPs for each designated Seiban requirement performed right along with the "regular" MRP for non-Seiban requirements. Honeycomb®ERP simplifies and enables this process by providing the interactive Honeycomb®ERP Seiban workbench and Honeycomb®ERP Project Resource Planning.

Why use Seiban?

Why would a company want or need to pre-designate specifically how and where the inventory will be used?

• Due to customer requirements, as in a built-to-order environment, manufacturers must be more responsive in order to remain competitive
• Because stocks and activities are linked through a common designator, visibility is enhanced, making the retrieval of Seiban / job-specific information instantaneous
• Information on all activities related to Seiban / job-related activities are highly accessible, thus improving coordination and synchronization
• Quick and easy retrieval of job-specific supply orders
• Customer-order-line level visibility throughout the entire manufacturing process
• Synchronized production Planing, assembly, and delivery of products to customers as promised
• Customer-order-line profitability analysis
• Superior cost accounting through positive identification and tracking of all Seiban/job-related purchases, materials and routing activities  

The Honeycomb®ERP Seiban Solution

Honeycomb®ERP incorporates the Seiban principle within a larger resource planning application that can coexist and is fully integrated with traditional Master Production Schedule (MPP) and MRP approaches. This tool, Honeycomb®ERP Project Resource Planning, is designed to track Seibans, jobs, projects or contracts; gather all related costs in a defined manner; and make status, progress and projected customer delivery information readily available.
Honeycomb®ERP Seiban Workbench facilitates all management and maintenance of Seiban-related parts, orders and activities. The solution provides a set of tools to:

• The ability to plan and re-plan material items and service items and to manage these items through the use of Seiban identification numbers

• The ability to perform impact analysis to see the effect of a change or potential change, because all other activities (both up and down the Bill of Material) are tightly linked to all others

• The ability to perform advanced capacity resource planning for an order

• The ability to change the Plan for any item within the Seiban group and optionally have the system adjust all other items, activities and schedules by the same amount and keep them in synchronization. This also applies to changes in the customer requirement or master plan.

• Full integration with MPP and MRP, meaning that Seiban planning and management work independently.

• The ability to track all costs associated with the Seiban and value-added activities including direct-purchased materials, work orders, services and indirect costs

• Improved inventory management through the ability to peg replenishments to requirements

• Reduced inventory requirements because acquisition and replenishment can be tied directly to specific needs

• The ability to perform multi-level planning. For material and service items, PRP explodes the associated Bill of Material and plans the PRP items. Lower level MPP and MRP items are sent to the appropriate application for planning