Can I add an Operation without creating a job?

Kinetic ERP
1

Hi guys,
A quick question. We want to ship inventory items without creating jobs. These items consist of assemblies which are made by internal manufacturing jobs. The sub assemblies are then added to the BOM of the parent inventory item, which can then be ordered and shipped without creating a job. My question is, if I wanted t add an operation for picking and packing to the parent item , but not create a job, how does that operation get completed and the labour cost added?
Thanks in advance.

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To the best of my knowledge, this isnā€™t possible.

Operations are added to jobs. Time Entries are placed against those operations on the jobs.

You could create a job for the part with one ā€œPick/Packā€ operation and could even bypass MES if you wanted to manually enter the time in the Time Entry menuā€¦ but operations live on Jobs and any labor costs you want to record are placed against them there.

Whatā€™s the goal? Are you just trying to collect/account for shipping time? Are you trying to record that time against a specific part that is shippingā€¦ or just trying capture time for the shipping department as a whole?

Also, without a job, how are you accounting for all the subassemblies that are being picked for the shipment?

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Thanks for thee reply David,
I did think that this would be the case.
Basically, we usually have jobs created for everything we sell and all our products are configured. As you can imagine this means we create an awful lot of jobs. Our company has recently decided to make an ā€˜Expressā€™ range of products, where you could literally buy our popular products from off the shelf. I have been instructed to not have jobs created for these items, so that they can go from order to shipment in the minimum amount of time. Like I said, I can account for all the labour and materials to manufacture the parts using internal manufacturing jobs, so the the finished product consist of one to three sub assemblies. Where I am stuck is, as you say I cannot add a time to put the assemblies together and pack them on the top level item. I really just want to include the time because obviously, some one has to do it. I thought about adding it on the lower level assemblies, I did not like that idea though, so, just thought I would ask if there was a better way.

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You could do Sales Kits to do the assembly, but like David mentions, you canā€™t track the labor. Is labor assembly time/cost significant enough to track?

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Have you thought about kanban jobs?

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I gotcha. If you were shipping the parts/assemblies loose, then you could use Sales Kitsā€¦ but if you want to capture time to assemble and pack the top level assembly, you need a job.

If youā€™re only looking to account for department time (and not against a specific part)ā€¦ you could set up a manufactured part called ā€œPickPackShipā€ or something a little less nonsensical. Create one job, add one operation for assembly/pack.

Then, no matter what part is ordered (in these scenarios), time is entered against that one job/operation. At the end of the month (or whatever interval you need) close the job and you capture all the time entries.

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Another approach to no job is setup an indirect code that is mapped to the correct GL account.
Clock in when you do a batch of these shipments.

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Kanban jobs are perfect for this type of thing. You need a method, then when an employee does a kanban receipt, it creates the job, backflushes everything and completes the job all behind the scenes.

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Guess I need to read up on kanban jobs. Iā€™ve never explored their use. Interesting.

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Kanabn PO releases are also cool @dcamlin

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And now we have true blanket POs. Oh, the customizations I have worked on implementing these in prior versions!

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Canā€™t imagine!

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Thanks guys for all the feedback. Like you @dcamlin I have never come across Kanban jobs, I shall also read up on them, thank you @JennL
For now though, I will go with Davidā€™s suggestion of the manufactured part and put the operation in there.
Thanks again guys!

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I think I am going to be disappointed, but I will ask anyway. Is there a way to automatically issue the materials on the top level part? I do not have an operation to backflush against. Please say yes :slight_smile:

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noā€¦ you need to tell the system that you did something.

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If you use kanban jobs, you just tell the system ā€œI made x number of theseā€ and the system creates the job, issues the material, receives the parts to inventory, then closes the job for you, all in one concise screen. If you want labor to be added (it will have to be a standard amount) you can add labor to the operation, and it will backflush that as well.

Is that not good enough for what you are trying to do?

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I agree, if there are no operations in place, why do you need a job record out there? You wouldnā€™t be measuring capacity or anything like that if you donā€™t need an op, so why do you even need a job header. I think using a kanban job seems like a great fit here.

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Kanban job does create job headers and all the related info. It just does it all in one fell swoop after you physically do the work.

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It sounds like it would do what I need. Does MRP still flag the demand?
Do you have a link to any documentation?

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You have to uncheck that process mrp if you donā€™t want to see it processed for the finished part number. Iā€™ll let @Banderson explain the rest cause I have been far removed from this for some time now.