Polyester foam planning

[u/RustBeltLab]

I purchase raw materials for a large polyester foam operation (cleaning sponges). We are currently using production minutes as a measure of output but I am wondering if it would make more sense to instead measure the board feet of output. In other words, my bill of materials times production minutes or board feet of output. Thank you, sorry if worded strange.

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[u/Acceptable-Chain-189]

Switching to board feet makes far more sense for material planning. Production minutes are too detached from what you're actually buying and using.

Your BOM cost will track directly with volume output, which is what you want for purchasing raw materials. Minutes can fluctuate wildly with machine downtime or a slow operator and will drive you mad trying to reconcile inventory.

[u/UzonnaBeaubert17 → u/Acceptable-Chain-189]

yeah trying to reconcile inventory against clock time is a total nightmare when machines act up

[u/FunHeron9022 → u/Acceptable-Chain-189]

Agree on board feet for material planning, but I'd keep production minutes around separately for capacity and labor efficiency tracking. You don't want to lose visibility on throughput just because you switched the purchasing metric. Both numbers tell you different things.