This is a guest post by Darren Onken, founder of Onkinetix.
Kinetrax is an MRP software package designed to be a very flexible tool. It can be configured to do a wide range of tasks but currently comes preconfigured in a few specific versions. One of these preconfigured versions is for an electronics assembly plant and is the focus of this article.
We (the developers at Onkinetix) come from a long history of electronics manufacturing and the software used to manage it. Over the years we have developed several custom programs for PCB bare board manufacturing as well as electronics assembly. We decided to create a platform utilizing this experience that could be quickly adapted for various end user requirements. We created a new company that would focus on this development and in May 2012 we released Kinetrax. This release was announced after almost a year of refinement in real world environments
.Kinetrax has many features that streamline the manufacturing process and provide real time information to its users. One of these features is a powerful Bill of Materials module. This module ties in with others like parts allocation, requisitions, and purchasing. It optimizes visibility of these functions so that components are available as expected. The BOM module also allows for complex imports of customer information. The incoming BOM files may vary greatly in their structure but the Kinetrax importer scans the information and allows for columns of data to be assigned to the correct parameters. This saves the data in an internal format that is defined as the standard for the assembly house.
We found that one of the most time consuming tasks related to job quoting and order entry was the research required to find and price parts. Countless hours are spent searching for availability and current pricing. The task becomes more complex with multiple price breaks for different quantities. To help with this task we incorporated an interface with our friends at Octopart. We built Octopart API calls right into the BOM viewer in Kinetrax. With the click of a button on a BOM line, the pricing and availability from many vendors can be determined. The entire BOM can be priced at various assembly quantities with a single click of a button. Each line is queried through the Octopart API to return the appropriate price break for the quantity required. Each line of the BOM then contains a drop down box with all possible choices and vendors with available parts are displayed. A default choice is automatically selected based on price and vendor preference settings. Items that are not available through the Octopart API are flagged for further consideration and can be manually edited.
Overall the Octopart features of Kinetrax have been a huge success. The current users are very happy with this included functionality. We look forward to further enhancements as new versions are released. See our Kinetrax.com website for more details and to schedule a demo.