Purchasing Managers
Buy against the jobs that are actually open, see what landed and what did not, and know which delivery moves when a supplier slips a week.
What to buy, when it lands, and which job stops if it does not.
Purchasing in a high-mix shop is not a reorder-point exercise. The demand is a stack of open jobs with dates on them, and the real question every morning is which one stops first if a supplier slips a week. WorkCell puts the supplier catalog, requisitions, purchase orders and receipts on the same database the jobs run on, so a buyer sees the demand a job created and the receipt that satisfied it without exporting anything. Be clear about one thing up front: WorkCell does not run a material requirements plan today, so there is no nightly run handing you a buy list. Planning material is still a buyer's judgment. What changes is that the judgment gets made against live job demand, real receipts and real supplier history instead of a spreadsheet copied last Monday.
Jobs get released whether or not the material was checked, and the only place the full picture exists is a buyer's memory plus a spreadsheet that was accurate on Monday. Nobody else in the building can answer what is on order and what is still uncovered, so the question comes back to you five times a day and the answer degrades every time it is repeated.
The supplier says four weeks, the shop quotes to four weeks, and the material shows up in six. Nothing in the system records what actually happened, so next quarter the same supplier gets quoted at four weeks again. The gap between the quoted lead time and the delivered one is the single most useful number in purchasing, and most shops have never written it down.
A short ship, an overage, or the wrong revision gets stacked on the rack and nobody flags it until the invoice does not foot three weeks later. By then the job has already been scheduled against a quantity that never arrived, the receiving paperwork is somewhere in a pile, and the person who signed for it has forgotten which truck it came off.
Parts leave for heat treat or plating and fall out of the system entirely. The job still shows as in process, the operator who needs them has no date, and the only way to find out where they are is to call the vendor and hope somebody picks up. The cost comes back later as an AP invoice nobody can tie to a job.
No single purchase order looks wrong. Over a year the same bar stock and the same tooling drift up a few percent at a time from the one supplier who is easiest to call. One shop manager on Practical Machinist cut monthly tooling spend from sixty thousand to twenty-five by putting the same lines out for competitive bid, which is only possible if the history is somewhere you can read it.
A supplier catalog that holds the real terms
Each supplier's own part number, price, unit of measure, and quoted lead time live on the catalog record rather than in an email thread. When a buyer prices a line, the number comes from the last thing that supplier actually agreed to, and alternates for the same item sit side by side instead of in four different folders.
Requisitions that become purchase orders without retyping
The person who needs the material raises a requisition, purchasing prices it and turns it into a purchase order against the supplier catalog. Nothing is transcribed between the ask and the order, so the part number, revision and quantity on the order are the ones that were requested rather than the ones somebody retyped at four in the afternoon.
Receipts in pieces, with unit conversion handled
Material bought in feet, pounds or sheets and consumed as pieces converts on receipt rather than in a buyer's head. Inventory is tracked in pieces, so the quantity the floor sees is the quantity the floor can use, and lot or serial detail is captured at the dock where the certification actually arrives.
Every purchase lands on the job that needed it
A Job cost object is stamped on every posting, including receipts, so material and outside processing hit the job's actual cost as they happen. Nobody allocates purchases to jobs at month end, and the controller does not have to ask you which invoice belonged to which work order.
Foreign-currency purchases converted on the way through
A supplier quoting in euros or yen is held in the supplier's currency and converted through to the job cost and the ledger. The buyer compares landed numbers rather than doing arithmetic on a phone, and the conversion that fed the cost is on the record rather than reconstructed later.
Supplier performance that comes out of the receipts
Promised date against received date, short ships, and quantity variances accumulate from the transactions you were already entering. Supplier reviews stop being an argument about anecdotes, and the shop finally has a defensible answer to which supplier earns the next blanket commitment and which one gets a second source.
| Task | What Changes |
|---|---|
| Load your suppliers | Enter the suppliers you buy from more than twice a year with their part numbers, current prices and quoted lead times. This is the one-time data entry that makes everything after it faster, and it is usually an afternoon rather than a week because most shops have fewer real suppliers than they think. |
| Enter the open purchase orders | Put the orders that are already out on the water into the system with their promised dates. From that point forward the question of what is on order has one answer that is not in your head, and anyone who asks can look it up instead of walking to your desk. |
| Receive one shipment against its order | Take the next truck and receive it line by line against the purchase order, in the unit you actually count. The variance between ordered and received is recorded at the moment it is visible, which is the only time anybody knows what really came off the truck. |
| Look at the jobs waiting on material | Open the jobs with the nearest dates and see which ones have material covered by a receipt and which ones do not. That list is the first honest picture of where purchasing is the constraint, and it is the list you bring to the production meeting instead of a verbal summary. |
| Price your next buy from history | Before you place the next order, read what you paid the last three times and what each supplier actually delivered against. The first time this changes a decision is usually the first time the system pays for itself, because it is the same mechanism behind every competitive-bid story on the forums. |
Supplier catalog, requisitions, purchase orders, receipts, and supplier history.
InventoryPieces on hand with unit conversion, lot and serial capture at receiving.
ProductionThe open jobs and dates that tell you what the material is actually for.
AccountingWhere the receipt becomes a cost on the job and a line in AP.
The person whose schedule breaks when the material lands a week late.
ControllersWhere the receipt you posted becomes a cost on the job and a line in the ledger.
Job ShopsHigh-mix shops buying against open jobs rather than against a forecast.
Contract ManufacturersBuying to customer-supplied bills of material under someone else's dates.
Does it run MRP and generate the purchase orders for me?
No. WorkCell does not run a material requirements plan today, so there is no run that produces buy recommendations or drafts orders. Purchasing works from the supplier catalog, requisitions, purchase orders and receipts, with the demand from open jobs visible alongside them. We would rather say that plainly than let you find out in week three.
Can I set up a blanket order and release against it?
Not as its own document type yet. Today a blanket commitment is handled as a pricing agreement in the supplier catalog with individual purchase orders cut against it as you need releases. It works, and the history is all there, but it is not a single blanket record with a release schedule hanging off it.
What happens when a supplier short-ships or sends the wrong revision?
You receive the quantity that actually arrived against the purchase order line, and the shortfall stays visible as an open balance rather than closing silently. There is no automated three-way match against the invoice yet, so the AP comparison is still a person reading two numbers, but both numbers are in one place.
How do I keep track of parts out at heat treat or plating?
Outside processing is bought on a purchase order tied to the job, so the operation shows what it is waiting on and the vendor cost lands on that job when it comes back. Parts at a vendor stop being invisible, and the AP invoice arrives with a job already attached to it.
Can I actually compare what I paid across suppliers for the same part?
Yes. Every purchase order and receipt is kept against the item and the supplier, so the price history for a part sits in one place across all the suppliers you have bought it from. That is the history a competitive bid needs, and it is the thing a shared spreadsheet never preserves for long.
We buy in euros and sell in dollars. Does that break anything?
No. Purchases are held in the supplier's currency and converted through to inventory value, job cost and the ledger, so you compare landed cost rather than quoted cost. The rate used on each transaction is kept with it, which is what the controller needs when the ledger is reconciled.
See it from your seat.
Tell us what you buy, how late it usually lands, and which job it stopped last month, and we will show you how purchasing looks on one database.