Aftermarket vs. Production Part Handling

Epicor ERP 10
1

We recently completed a project to improve our MoM’s, both from a structure and accuracy perspective. This involved flattening our BOM’s to be more accurate to how we manufacture (got rid of the excessively layered sub-assemblies), adding accurate BOO’s in both process order and time standards accuracy, and making more level 1 sub-assemblies to increase the configurability of our product.

A challenge we have now is handling of aftermarket and/or replacement parts. These parts get ordered as individual lines, but they actually need to be assembled together. In the production version of these parts, the parent assembly holds the ops as the assembly of these components happen at the same time as the whole parent. Imagine a table with adjustable legs. In production we press a foot into the inner leg and insert into table leg channel. So the finished table holds the assembly op. If that leg gets damaged, we just need to send an inner leg with pressed foot. And since it get ordered as individual lines, manufacturing needs to remember to press them together, which they have forgotten to do many times. I can only think to create a sub-assembly for this leg and foot combo with an operation, but I am hesitant to put this into the parent since we just did a bunch of work to get our MoM’s accurate. I’m interested in advice on how best to handle a situation such as this.

Another scenario is when we have a production version of a sub-assembly and a slightly different version for aftermarket. Production version may utilize fasteners where an aftermarket may utilize double-sided tape, for instance. We currently utilize no form of links to associate one to the other and this has caused issues when completing change orders where the aftermarket version gets forgotten about. Is there any advice on how to link or associate these parts to each other either by part number convention, Epicor functionality, Drafting process, or other?

2

You could use Alternate Parts here (PartSubs Table). We have a BPM on certain categories of PartSubs that throw a message to the order entry person. I’m wondering if it might be useful to have some kind of BPM warning to show the Aftermarket version if there is something that may indicate that it might use after-market.

To me this sounds like it should be a single order line with the leg and foot as materials, with an Assembly operation. I don’t think that would negate the work of the new more accurate MoMs, it would be an extension of that.

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3

Take a step back and look at this on a shop-wide level, because you’d like to follow the same process for everything as much as possible. How I might approach it is anything that can be ordered should have its own part number with its own MOM. “Leg and foot combo” is a part number with a BOO and and BOM. “Table with adjustable legs” is a different part number, and it’s BOM probably only has “leg” and “foot” as component items. Each BOO details how to assemble each item. If you treat each sellable item individually, it makes shop floor mistakes less likely.

HOWEVER, it increases the likelihood of your second issue… if you update either the BOM or BOO of a finished part (production OR aftermarket), what other related parts need to be at least looked at? Kinetic has an entire Task process you can build (this is not a trivial undertaking), or you can build a process using Where Used and maybe a UD table or two (also not trivial).

The frequency of these updates and the discipline of your engineering staff will speak into what works best for your organization.

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