Buyer Workbench not showing demand

I am having problems with New Suggestions not being created for some parts. I have checked the settings and it all seems in order. The most puzzling part is that it does happen less than once a year and not for the same parts.
Has anyone experienced anything similar?
Are there other settings I should check in addition to the Site tab?

More info:
the part that is currently not showing up in the Buyer Workbench has demand in the Time Phase, on the Site tab it has a minimum order quantity, a buyer, a lead time, a supplier, and the box for Generating PO suggestion is ticked. There are no POs open or waiting to be received. The demand comes only from unfirmed jobs.
Last time it happened was October 2019 for a completely different part, which had the Site tab set up correctly (as far as I could see), but had an open PO showing an expedite suggestion rather than a new PO. Last time the issue was thought to be on the PO which had fixed qty but no fixed dates even if there should have been additional demand for more quantity. This time with no POs in sight I cannot find a good reason for the new PO not to show up in the Buyer Workbench.

Can you regenerate purchasing suggestions? If the demand is there, you should get a good suggestion.

Check if you have any of the part in pending inspection. Inspection will show as po received but non in inventory yet, but MRP will treat that quantity as supply.

Hi Valentina,

We are on 10.1.600 and have found the generation of PO suggestions to be quite reliable. I see your one example where you got a change suggestion to an existing PO instead of a new PO suggestion.
This appears reasonable since system will try to change a PO (within the days of supply I think), rather than create a new one, as long as the PO date/quantity are not locked on PO release.

We have had problems with buyers deleting new PO suggestions. It was bad enough trying to figure out what the deal was that we customized PO suggestions to show deleted purchasing suggestions, stored for a week in a UD table. Could you possibly have a user with access doing a PO suggestion deletion?

You might want to provide screenshot of your part detail and part plant and timephase on the part for all sites, to help troubleshoot here in EpiUsers. I find a picture goes a long way to describing the situation.

Nancy

Just checked, no parts pending inspection. In general the total quantity we have around the company is not enough to cover any of the jobs.

I am quite sure it was not cancelled this time, at least the issue persisted re-running the MRP process.
Regarding the picture:

just to cover all the bases, did you check DMR too?

image

Hi Valentina,

Can you do a screenshot of timephase inquiry too on it?

Thanks
Nancy

Empty, we literally have 2 parts in total.

The PO is the new one added today after the discovery of the demand. This morning it was showing all 3 jobs as below zero, yet there was nothing on the Buyer Workbench.

What about the Reschedule Deltas and Process MRP?

Also, do you have like a crazy-long lead time on the supplier price list for the part? I see the first job is supposed to be “ordered” like 9 months ago…

We are using 5 which is no expedite? Would this prevent new suggestions? I thought it would have only stopped changes on already created jobs/POs

Lead Time is 30 days on both the Site tab and Supplier Price List.
I see, we are using the European dates, it is to be ordered by December the 3rd

Ah I feel silly/ignorant there.

I’m never certain with those myself. I had played with those settings years ago, but I just ended up more confused than when I started.

Those values control change suggestions.

@Valentina You can run a single part on a net change and look at the log on the server to see what Epicor is calculating. If you want to see a full regen you can’t do a single part.

the log looks like this

Greg

On the server
image
From Epicor Client use Server file download

Pick Company and then select file. Then Logs and the user id that ran the process. Select a location to download them and click ok.
image
image

1 Like

On the Sites/Planning tab, is the Process MRP checkbox checked?

Yes it is

On the logs I cannot find a line for the part. It looks like it has not been picked up at all. But I do not have all the logs since the first job has been created, so there still might be something.
I will keep an eye out on the logs in case it happens again.

If I recall correctly, when I had this problem, it was recommended that I run 2 mfg rebuild processes.

  1. Refresh PartBin QOH from PartTran
  2. Refresh Part Quantities and Allocations

Hope it helps.
Marykay