We stock sheet metal in square feet. A common sheet metal gauge that we carry is 18 gauge. We buy this 18 gauge sheet metal in 3 different sheet sizes: 36" wide, 48" wide, and 60" wide. Our vendor needs to know which size to provide, and charges us differently based on the width of the sheet.
When we receive it, we are only interested in how many square feet of 18 gauge we have. The size of the sheet no longer matters to us (we have other inventory controls in place, so this isn’t an issue for us). Some parts that we produce may be from any width sheet, depending on the most efficient nesting for our laser.
So far, the best solution I have come up with is having a single part number that represents 18 gauge sheet (no width specified), and then setting up Supplier Part Numbers under that part on the Supplier Price List. This way, we our vendor knows what size we are ordering, but we can receive using only that one part number.
It is an entirely visual process. We have sheet metal in racks (on skids), and every single day we have a buyer review how much we have and what we need to order. We have been doing this forever. I know it is old school, but nothing is more reliable than visually confirming what we have on hand (this takes less than 5 minutes per day for us). As far as the inventory in the system goes, we really don’t care what the sheet dimensions are.
It would be impossible to predict what size sheet we’re going to use to laser-cut parts from. It is different all the time. We could have 10 different jobs nested on the same sheet, and every one of those jobs could be on a different size sheet the next time.
I hadn’t seen that, but that is pretty much the opposite of the issue we’re dealing with…their issue is that some sizes aren’t usable…our issue is that all sizes are usable.
In the Part Master, have the IUM set for SQ FT since that’s all that you need the system to track for quantity and costing. Set up additional UOM conversions in the Area UOM Class to cover all your sheet sizes so that the system can convert each sheet size into square feet. Things like SH1 = 32sq ft (or however you want to define them). Continue with the Supplier PN that you’re doing, and then all the Purchasing crew has to do is select the appropriate sheet size on the purchase order.
On your packing list is your vender giving you sheets or pounds received? If it is pounds this is a simple conversion. On our tags from the vender, they list pounds in the bundle. The packing list I have in front of me lists both pieces and pounds. You would just assign a part specific unit of measure for each material thickness. For the 18ga example 1 pound would be equal to 0.5 sqft. Some of this comes down to uom classes, I would have a specific one for sheet/plate that contains pounds and square feet in your example.
In that case, you might want to consider creating a whole new UOM Class in the Other category that relates SQ FT and LB… if the sheet size is not relevant at any point in the process then why waste time working with it at all?
How does the Accounting department feel about the widely varying cost of a part - because you said the price depends on the sheet size?
I personally would make a part number for each width. Then maybe track total length (like board feet) of each width. Not only will it make accounting happier, it gives you better visibility.
We used to by metal tubing in 20 FT lengths. Some product required a fully 20 FT length. Others just 10 FT, 8 FT or 5 FT. Originally it had an IUM of FT. If we initially bought 200 FT, we’d have (10) 20 FT lengths.
If a job for (5) of the 8 FT products was made, we might have either:
160 FT left - if we took 8 FT off of (5) 20 FT lengths, leaving us with 5 x 20 + 5 x (20-8)
or
152 FT left - if we took (5) 8 FT lengths off of (3) 20 Ft pieces, leaving us with 7 x 20 + 2 x (20-8-8) + 1 x (20 - 8)
Which yields (4) 4 FT pieces which are unusable and must be scrapped.
We do it kind of that way here. We have 1 single part number for a specific type of material and thickness (18 gauge 304 stainless steel for exemple) and it’s IUM is square feet. Then, we created a UOM Class “Sheet” and we have multiple UOMs (like 48120 for a 48" by 120" sheet) with conversion factors to square feet. We import monthly price lists under these part numbers for the different sheet sizes and it works well when we issue our POs to the suppliers.
This does imply that we receive in sheet sizes and not in square feet though. Later on in the process we split the sheet in square feet because we issue material in square feet, so maybe you could receive and split immediately the material back into square feet and not deal with sheet sizes? I wonder how the people who nest work with the software if they don’t know what sizes are available to them though!
I’ll be a little more precise… do you need Epicor to track what sheet sizes are in stock at any given time, or does using appropriate text fields suffice for what Epicor needs to track?
If you want Epicor to be able to spit out exactly what you have in stock, this becomes a different discussion.
Epicor doesn’t need to track the sheet sizes that we have in stock. Text fields would work to communicate to the supplier what we need to purchase.
I’ve been using Supplier Part Numbers so I can communicate to suppliers what size sheet we need, and so I can create a BAQ that will show us purchase history on various sheet sizes, quantities, and cost.
Accounting is happy with our current situation. We use average cost for our purchase parts. Since our sheet metal parts that we produce might come from any sheet width, average makes sense for us.