Has anyone seen or done something like this. We print at our shop, inline as we make bags, and sometimes post print with bags already made (basically think a giant stamp). When we get an order for a qty of say 1000 bags we might just simply post print them as it’s more cost effective than setting up an entire inline machine for 4 minutes of run time. If we have an order for say 50000 that’s something we will run inline for sure.
What we do today is create our revision as an inline engineered revision, but create an alternate revision on it for post printing. The job will get created from our make direct releases using the inline resources, but if the qty is low we clear the job assembly and reload the engineering from the alternate method.
There must be a better way to handle this, if not an automated way even if it requires customization. Just looking for some creative thoughts or what others might be doing for this.
I haven’t seen it, but it sounds logical enough.
What’s the source of the job?
If it’s coming from MRP you could schedule a function to fixup the MRP jobs after MRP runs. (Or automate creating the jobs before MRP runs)
If it’s from order job wizard you could fix up the job in a post process async directive.
How clean are your rules?
You could add a min order qty on each of your alt methods to figure out what which jobs should be cleaned up.
The jobs are created by MRP. The rules are fairly clean anything 2 colors or less and 5k or less qty 95% of the time is going to be post printed. Anything above that will not be (each color has to be done one at a time so qty processed is colors x qty).
Another consideration I had was creating a PP revision that’s specifically Post Print. Then at order entry using rules based on qty assigned to set the revision to PP if those conditions are met. Might be an easier point of injection. Only bummer is getting rid of all our alt methods and converting them to a regular revision, but might be worth the effort in the end.
Are these parts non-stock?
If they are run through inventory MRP will ignore the rev. I like the idea of two revs, but think through the unintended consequences. Do you have reports or dashboards that are going to now have trouble with two approved revs.
If the parts are already non-stock it’s not too bad to turn off MRP on those parts and generate jobs in your own process.
If you turn Use Part Rev off on part maintenance for the sales order partnum. Then MRP will use the REV that is on the sale order line.
you could just have 2 revs. call the revs (>X) or (<X)
then let whomever is creating your sales orders (or create a bpm ) to pick the appropriate rev on the sales order line bases on sales order quantity.
They are non-stock. As far as reports and dashboards go, we have intentionally ignored revision in almost all cases, because the end product is the same regardless. If inventory handled by revision it would be a different story and we might pay more attention to it but because it doesn’t that record set has never really mattered to us.
We are looking at possibly relying on capable to promise as we change our process here and maybe that is where we create the jobs from vs letting MRP do it. Have to really mull that one over though. That could seriously rock the boat.
