This week I got to watch the accounting/shipping part of the manufacturing process. They showed me the entire process, from accepting a purchase order, to shipping it to the end customer.
DFD accepts purchase orders three ways: by e-mail, fax and over the phone. The orders are taken, confirmed, and then put in an a central area where a single person can either pull the entire order and box it up, or take it and [in the case of a custom order], design and build it themselves. I got to watch a bit of the custom design work, but I mostly worked on the orders made up of standard products.
After you receive a purchase order, you have to review the order and make sure you understand what they are ordering, and that the prices are correct. If you have any questions, you’re supposed to call the purchasing agent and confirm or correct whatever information is in question.
The confirmed purchase order is then filled by taking the products off of the shelves where they’re stored, re-testing them [so they’re tested directly after being built, and just before they’re shipped to the customer], and packing them in the correct type of shipping box depending on how they will be shipped. Shipments going ground are put into a normal box, and Overnight and 2nd Day Air packages are put into either a UPS or FedEx Express box.
After the products have been boxed up, they are measured and weighed, and readied for invoicing and shipping. Their inventory system doubles as an invoicing and accounting software, so when a product is invoiced, the serial numbers are taken out of inventory and shown to have been sent to whichever account purchased them.
After I got the hang of it, they let me do a few very simple orders. I didn’t get to actually create the invoice and shipping label, but I did everything else.
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