USA Purchase Order Procedure

[slaub]

I am a summer intern at a medium sized manufacturing company in the United States. My current task is to determine whether the company's current PO system is too faulty to continue using or to provide suggestion as to how to improve it. Currently the company has four classifications for Purchase Orders (PO). The four classifications are, Production PO's (called P2's), Non-Production MRO-PO's (called PG's), Outside Process PO's (called PM's), and Capital Investment PO's (called PC's). The largest problem with this is that employees commonly misclassify items purchased. Would it be better to write up some sort of Procedure with an in-depth description of how to classify purchases? Or would it be better to switch to a system with only one type of PO and purchases are classified by account codes? Some sort of Procedure describing the account codes would have to be created.

Pros and Cons of each would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

 

[kirby]

Give a person 4 different forms for essentially the same task and they will find more than 4 ways and reasons for using the "wrong" form. "Well - I ran out of the correct form so I thought I could just use this one instead."
I say "essentially the same task" because I am speculating that each form at some point must say " we want X units of Y product at Z price delivered by DD date." True?

 

[slaub]

There is only one form for the actually Purchase Order. The purchase orders as assigned a number and a prefix based on what the order is for and what department it is for. Example, For Production orders, their PO numbers begin with the prefix P2 and is then followed by 5 numbers to identify what account and department it is for.

 

[kirby]

OK -sorry - when you said "switch to a system with only one type of PO" seemed there was more than one PO form. hmmm Anyway-so OK just one form but 4 coding types.
So -before the old regime is toppled - who used those po\acct \dept codes and what for? And what will they do if you just use acct codes?