Project Name: Receiving Area Improvement for high-tech company.

Problem: The employees in the receiving area were going through several unnecessary steps when receiving products. The original steps were (1) Locate the purchase order in one several thick notebooks containing all company PO's. (2) Record the quantity of products received, date, and initials. (3) Copy the part number and other information to a piece of paper. (4) Walk to the computer. (5) Make the transaction in the Materials Resource Planning (MRP) computer system to show the transaction.

Evaluation: An initial evaluation of the process showed that all the information being recorded on the paper purchase orders was also being recorded in the computer system. The only reason for the paper system was to allow the employees to determine the proper transaction code for the MRP computer system.

Solution: Themz.com designed a program that allowed the receiving area employees to quickly lookup the information needed and transfer the transaction code to the MRP system. Benefits of the solution included (1) elimination of the need for keeping paper PO's in the receiving area and maintaining a filing system for them (2) significantly faster overall receipt times (3) fewer mistakes.