Group Members

Introduction
Bewilderment, fear, and sometimes
repulsion are reactions you may receive
when you suggest backflushing
materials in a production reporting
system
The reaction can best be described as
one you would expect from someone
experiencing his first visit to a
proctologist
So what is backflushing?
If you ask someone involved with
engineering or maintenance theyll likely
describe it as reversing the flow of
materials (generally liquids) to flush
contaminants from some type of filtering
device. Water treatment plants are a good
example where water is filtered through
sand to remove impurities; periodically they
will reverse the flow through the sand to
force the contaminants to the surface
where they can be removed.
Example
To make things clearer, for a portion of this
article I will refer to backflushing as
postproduction issuing. I will also use
the term preproduction issuing to
describe the method(s) for issuing material
most people are familiar with. Its
important to discuss the similarities in the
programs used to execute postproduction
issuing and preproduction issuing to
demonstrate that the two methods are
essentially small variations of a single
process.

Example 1
The Taste Like Cardboard Snack
Company has set up a production work
cell for their sandwich assembly that
makes several combinations of
sandwiches on white or wheat bread,
with ham, turkey, or beef, American or
Swiss cheese, and mustard or
mayonnaise.
Example 2
A real-world example of postproduction
posting is of a manufacturer of
paperboard packaging materials.
products produced were round lids that
consisted of a custom printed insert, rim
base material, rim label material, and
adhesive.
Disadvantages of
Preproduction
Difficult to account for used materials
Scrap materials difficult to measure
Warehouse not isolated from the
process of product counting
Process highly prone to errors

Advantages Of Backflushing
Production Process largely free of errors
storage isolated from product item list as
material requirement list issued from
point of use
Scrap properly accounted for