Free Lean Tool
PFEP Builder — Plan for Every Part
A PFEP is the single source of truth for every purchased part in your facility: how it’s packaged, who supplies it, where it’s stored, where it’s used, and how fast it’s consumed. Build yours below — the tool sizes your purchased-parts market as you type, showing every formula in the open.
PFEP BuilderPFEP Builder — Plan For Every Part
Lean material-handling database + purchased-parts market sizing
One row per part number
A Plan For Every Part (PFEP) is a single controlled table that answers, for every purchased part in the facility: how is it packaged, who supplies it, where is it stored, where is it used, and how fast is it consumed? Most plants have this information scattered across systems and heads — the PFEP puts it in one sortable place.
The math, in the open
Hourly usage = daily usage ÷ production hours per day
Containers per day = daily usage ÷ pieces per container
Shipment size (days) = delivery frequency as days of production: daily = 1 · 3x/week = 1.67 · 2x/week = 2.5 · weekly = 5 · 2x/month = 10 · monthly = 20 (5-day week)
Buffer (pieces) = daily usage × buffer days — a deliberate, visible allowance for demand and delivery variation
Max inventory = (daily usage × shipment size) + buffer pieces — the most that should ever sit in the market
Max containers = max inventory ÷ pieces per container, rounded up — this is what sizes racks and floor space
Min level (containers) = expedite hours × containers used per hour, rounded up
The minimum level is an expedite trigger, not a reorder point. A healthy ordering system replenishes well before the minimum; hitting it means something broke — act immediately.
Want an editable copy?
Download the free PFEP template — the full column set with live market-sizing formulas (max inventory, containers to store, expedite triggers) and a worked example plant. Opens in Excel and Google Sheets.
What is a PFEP?
PFEP stands for Plan for Every Part. It is a controlled database — usually a spreadsheet — with exactly one row per purchased part number, holding everything the plant needs to know about that part: daily usage, point of use, storage address, order frequency, supplier and supplier location, container type, dimensions and weights, pieces per container, carrier, and transit time. Most facilities already have this information, but it lives in a dozen systems and several people’s heads. The PFEP puts it in one sortable place, visible to everyone, and that visibility is what makes a lean material-handling system possible. It is the foundation that a pull system, a purchased-parts market, and standard-work delivery routes are built on: none of them can be designed without accurate part-by-part data.
Two habits separate a useful PFEP from a dead file. First, enter data in the smallest element possible— container length, width, and height as three fields rather than one “24 x 16 x 12” string, and supplier city, state, and country as separate columns — so you can sort by height when designing flow racks, or by region when planning milk runs. Second, give the PFEP one owner: a single person who approves every change, so the data stays trustworthy as containers, suppliers, and volumes evolve.
What each column means
- Part # and description — the identity of the row; one row per part number, never per location.
- Daily usage — average pieces consumed per production day, from real consumption data, not a forecast.
- Usage location / storage location — the cell or line that consumes the part, and its address in the purchased-parts market.
- Order frequency — how often the part is delivered (daily, twice a week, weekly, monthly). This single column drives most of your inventory.
- Supplier, city, state, country, rating — who makes it, where they are, and how they perform (a simple 1 = excellent to 5 = bad scale is enough to start).
- Container type, pieces per container, L x W x H, weights — the physical facts that size racks, delivery carts, and ergonomic limits.
- Carrier and transit time — who moves it and how many days it spends on the road; essential when deciding what can be expedited.
- Buffer and expedite time — your deliberate allowance for variation, and how fast an emergency shipment can reach the line.
Sizing a purchased-parts market from the PFEP
A purchased-parts market is a single, controlled storage area — ideally near the receiving dock — that holds a defined maximum and minimum quantity of every purchased part. The PFEP is what lets you calculate those levels instead of guessing. For each part, the planned maximum inventory is daily usage multiplied by the shipment size in days (weekly delivery = five production days of parts per shipment, daily delivery = one), plus a deliberate buffer for demand and delivery variation. Divide that maximum by pieces per container and round up, and you have the number of containers to store — which, multiplied by container dimensions, sizes your racks and floor space. The minimum level works differently: it is the expedite time in hours multiplied by containers consumed per hour. Reaching it is not a routine reorder point — it is an alarm that says an emergency shipment must leave now, because production is that many working hours from a stockout.
Run the numbers on the example dataset and one lesson jumps out: the biggest lever on inventory is not safety stock but delivery frequency. Moving a part from weekly to daily delivery cuts its maximum inventory by most of a week’s worth of parts — usually a far larger saving than any buffer trimming, and the reason lean plants push toward frequent, small deliveries and supplier milk runs.
How to use this tool
Click Load Example to see a realistic twelve-part PFEP for a small pump-assembly plant, or start blank and add a row per part. Enter each part’s usage, supplier, container, and delivery facts — the column-group toggles let you hide what you aren’t working on, since a full PFEP is wide by nature. The Market Sizing columns compute automatically: containers per day, maximum inventory, containers to store, and the minimum expedite level. Click the calculator icon on any row to see the arithmetic worked out with that part’s numbers. Sort by any key column to find your biggest movers or largest storage consumers, search to filter, then export the full table as CSV, print a landscape summary, or download the editable Excel template with all formulas live.
Related tools
- Kanban Card Calculator — size the pull loops that connect your cells to the purchased-parts market
- EPEI Calculator — every part every interval: how often your upstream processes can make each part
- Value Stream Mapping Tool — see the material and information flow the PFEP supports
- SMED Changeover Analysis — shrink changeovers so smaller, more frequent batches become economical