The Purchasing Control subsystem has several major features to help in initiating, tracking, and controlling the constant flow of purchased materials, including:

• Purchase Order Life Cycle Processing
• Multi-Division Purchasing Capabilities
• Program or Contact Control
• Full Integration with Materials Planning and Shop Floor Control
• Material Certificates
• Flexible Reporting and Query Capability

Tracking material flow.
The Purchasing Control subsystem also helps ensure that materials arrive on time; by tracking materials procurement from requisition to stockroom receipt. While the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) subsystem guides the buyers by recommending when orders should be placed, expedited and canceled, the Purchasing Control subsystem takes control once the order is placed and manages the entire purchasing cycle.

When goods are received, this subsystem records the receipt, reduces due quantities, and highlights any overshipments. It provides information on expected receipts, material to be expedited, and backlogged orders. Material requisitions are entirely under user's control. Requisitions can be split or crowded to make more precise the control over schedule receipts.

Purchase order life cycle processing.
The Purchasing Control subsystem allows for continuous monitoring and tracking of a purchase order, from its initial creation to the time it is closed and purged from the system. Important information is stored which allows a buyer to select the most qualified vendor, negotiate the best price and delivery schedule, ensure parts are delivered on time, and evaluate the timeliness of the vendor's deliveries.

The subsystem also allows for negotiating blanket purchase orders and helps plan correct shipping schedules, due dates, quantities, and the handling of any rejected parts for purchases involving consignment of the manufacturer's materials to an outside vendor.

Vendor data maintained.
The Purchasing Control subsystem allows your purchasing department to maintain data on vendor/sources who are properly equipped and staffed to provide the required good and services you need to meet your MRP objectives. Fields maintained for each vendor specify information such as:

• A unique identification code
• Vendor name and address
• Vendor contact and telephone number
• Standard conditions and payment terms
• Normal shipping method.
  

Performance data tracked.
The Purchasing Control subsystem also maintains data on vendors which allows you to track their past performance. It tracks the following three aspects of vendor performance:

• Price (quantity and value per part)
• Quality (percentages of rejects)
• Timeliness (percentages of early/on-time/late deliveries, early and late quantities, the average number of days early or late).

This data is maintained on an aggregate basis for each vendor per part supplied, and is updated whenever a relevant transaction is performed. Because every transaction affecting a purchase order automatically updates these fields, the buyer has ready access to needed information for choosing vendors with the best combination of price, quality, and timeliness. Besides helping the buyer analyze and select the most qualified vendor, reviewing historical information on vendor performance can also prove useful when negotiating price schedules and discounts.

Process of obtaining.
Once the buyer has reviewed historical information on past performance of vendor and selected qualified prospects for the material to be purchased, the next step is to contact these possible suppliers to verify price and lead-time. Generally, the buyer will want to collect quotes price bids) from several vendors. The quote planning and gathering process involves completion of two tasks:

• Producing Requests for Quotation documents to send to qualified vendors;
• Entering the quotes on the system when the documents are returned.
  

Creating the requests for quotation documents.
When an RFQ is created on the system, specific fields allow for indicating such information as the:

• Buyer responsible for the RFQ
• RFQ number and date of creation
• Number of items on the RFQ
• Part number required
• Quantity and unit of measure of parts required
• Date the item is required from the vendor
• Number of days the prices quoted should be firm
• Data the quote must be received by
• Address the quote should be sent to
• Contract of program

When entering the RFQ, you also can identify the vendor codes of all the vendors you wish to quote on the items. The system will then automatically go to the Vendor File and print the vendor's address on the request when the documents are generated.

Flexible reporting and query capability.
The Purchasing control subsystem allows you to view vendor, order, and receipt information by using the query transactions or generating hardcopy reports using the report transactions.

Information you can view trough the query transactions includes:

• Requisitions, requests for quotation and quotes
• Vendors who supply specified parts
• Current status of purchase order and any receipts
• All PO's for a vendor, part, product category, or program
• Valid terms of payment, tax codes, invoice codes, etc.

Information you can print through the report transactions includes:

• All sources of supply for each part
• All open purchase orders for each vendor
• Any outstanding purchase order items that are due to be delivered prior to a specified date
• All quotes for a line item
• A summary of the value of all outstanding line items, by shop period
• A list of all receipts that arrived between specified dates.

Full integration with materials planning and shop control.
The Purchasing Control subsystem coordinates the initiation, tracking, and flow of purchased materials with Material Planning and Shop Floor Control activities. Requisitions for purchased materials may be created from the file of pre- requisitions generated by the MRP subsystem. They can be rolled into actual requisitions after review / approval from the planners.) The MRP subsystem also reviews the active purchase orders and recommends changes to the scheduled delivery dates for materials ordered, if necessary.

The Purchasing Control subsystem allows for creating and maintaining a file of potential vendors. Similarly, you can define vendors as outside work centers using the Shop Floor Control module. When work orders are scheduled through these outside work centers, a subcontract requisition for the work is automatically cut and placed in the requisition file. These requisitions become purchase orders for subcontracting work. When subcontract work is received on the receiving dock, it may then proceed back to the shop floor to continue to the next operation.

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