Build Schedule by Sales Requirements

Good morning,
My manager asked me today about a very specific use-case scenario. We are just getting to the point where we can run Global Scheduling. We don’t use MRP. No one has ever used an Epicor schedule here. So we are not sure exactly how to use it the best way for our company.

When I showed the floor manager my shop load report he asked for something a bit more specific. He has been directed from above that he must ship out $1,000,000 worth of products this month. Our scheduled jobs would not produce this much. How can he try pulling in other jobs that are due in the future, in order to meet the sales requirements for this month? This seems like a common business practice, but I have no idea how to get this out of Epicor without trial and error.

Our thinking is that you have to look at the list of jobs the scheduling engine has put in place for this month, then look at all the future jobs that we have demand for, and consider which of them we might pull into this month. Once we choose a few likely jobs, we would have to change the need by date, and reschedule in Epicor (Global Scheduling) to move the new jobs in to this month.

Can we line up a bunch of jobs that meet the sales requirement, then determine the shop load that would generate?

Has anyone else here ever been presented with a problem like this? How did you approach it? Are there built-in tools that address this issue?

I am not sure what are the right questions to ask here, so pitch in if you have an idea!
Thank you all for your time and consideration!
Nate

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Guess its not only my company after all :grimacing:

I’d really like to get us to that point, but I’m a bit daunted by the 200+ page technical reference for the scheduling. I wish I could just talk to someone who knows the ins and outs and explain what we want

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Bumping this one back to the top. I am sure someone must have done this before!

You’re starting down a pretty slippery rabbit hole here… if you pull in all your higher-value orders to ship this month, then it will get really hard to make that threshold next month, and in the mean time you’re starting to annoy all your lower-value order customers as their orders get pushed out.

There is no out-of-the-box functionality for this.

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I thought we were the only ones as well!

And then there is the elephant in the room that just gets ignored. If you bring something in, something must go out.

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This is something we expect. We can’t deal with the issue until we have all the data to make a decision.

We also expect this. At least there is the Schedule Impact Report that can help us see what is pushed around when we move jobs up.

Surely our CEO is not the first to ask a company to build the schedule based on the sales numbers we need to hit? Is there a different approach to scheduling that would address this issue? I am happy to try and explain why this can’t be done to the CEO, but I don’t know what to say.

Nobody has ever asked me for this, and Epicor’s Scheduling Engine is entirely date-based with zero regard for value.

You could probably create some dashboards to help your floor manager decide what can be moved in and out.

You could also use the Scheduling Priority, but that would also be a manual process and someone would have to set that for the higher-value (and thus higher-priority) jobs.

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So the process of solving this problem would be:

  1. If everything ships that’s supposed to ship this month, how far under $1m are we?
  2. What jobs that are scheduled to ship in the first couple of weeks next month have full material availability now and could possibly be pulled in? (Production Planner Workbench)
  3. Does the value of those jobs, LESS the value of what we push out, bring us to the $1m number?

I was thinking about making a custom dashboard for this purpose., Yes @Ernie I think that is exactly the direction I am going in.

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Somebody get this man a cold 14th Star brew… he’s going to need it!

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Yeah, it is really that #3 that I am worried about. I think I can get the other data just from some BAQs and the Production Planner. That last one is a doozey!

One step at a time. Look at all the SO Releases due to ship next month, sort them by value. Look at the time it will take to build each one. If it can’t be built by month-end, skip it and go to the next one. When you have your list of possibles, look at material availability for them. Anything that doesn’t have full availability, toss it. These are your possible pull-ins. Does their value get you over the number? If not, stop now and tell him it can’t be done this month, we can try again next month. If yes, start looking at what’s got to be pushed out, and subtract that value. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One thing at a time… it’s overwhelming enough as it is. Don’t make it moreso!

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No, certainly not. Although in the < cough > years of doing this, I have found that they aren’t the most successful CEOs. You get what you measure. This strategy doesn’t include customer satisfaction. Eventually, putting the numbers first leads to some sketchy practices like shipping and invoicing without the parts actually leaving the building. But eventually, you see poor quality and lower sales in the long term. :person_shrugging: That’s just been my experience. YMMV.

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And this leads to invalidating some of the Gross margin reports.

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Love this @Mark_Wonsil

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@NateS , I presume that you are already aware of the Scheduled Shipments Report. I’ve attached a dashboard equivalent that you might find helpful for your issue.
ScheduledShipmentsTracker.dbd (568.2 KB)

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Can you describe this event more thoroughly? Why would we ship/invoice without shipping the parts?

Because invoicing = sales dollars.

“We’re short of a $1M by these two orders. Ship 'em!”

I mean, we can’t get paid until we ship the parts. I don’t think we would choose to ship parts, then not ship them and still bill for them.