Upper management has requested for me to begin working on a custom form in Epicor that moves our fixture records out of Excel and into our own database.
The form will give them details about each fixture that will likely not change (Name, associated customer, location, notes, etc.).
They also want to be able to have a check-in/out system that I will ultimately use to write reports about historical fixture usage.
Conceptually, the problem I’m running into is how I could achieve on one part of the custom form, the detail for each fixture, and on the other part of the form, have a check-in/out system that tracks the status of each fixture (check-in and out dates, who checked it out, etc.).
I’m not sure what fields to make my “Key” fields that will support and allow me to keep static information about each fixture, while also creating new records each time a fixture is checked in or out.
I hope I articulated my issue clearly!
Does anyone know how this could be achieved?
As always, I appreciate it, and thank you in advance.
We are about to start testing the Maintenance Module, and I do not believe we have the Advanced Production Module.
I know the maintenance module will allow you to store things as “Equipment” with an “Equipment ID”, but because we haven’t started testing yet, I’m not sure how I could tie this goal in with that module.
If it were me, I would work on getting the Maintenance up and running as that is perfect for your current requirements. While the MM does do maintenance and calibration, it is much more. If you think of it as an Asset Module, you can see where you can benefit.
I’ve seen tooling and fixtures be entered as parts in some systems, but you don’t want to issue and return them multiple times just to track usage. You end up meeting your needs but it is very clunky.
If you enter all of your fixtures in the MM, you can tie it directly to Resources. That way you can actually add the fixtures to operations in jobs. So, instead of having to issue, the employee can log in to the operation and “check in” the resource they are using and “check out” it when they are done. Requires a bit of setup, but it is worth it if tracking is a management priority.
Can you just create Part numbers for the fixtures? You can then either use shipments and RMAs, or Stock Adjustments in and out, or Bin movements between bins representing locations.
Then your static data is on the Part (with UD fields if required in additional to the standard ones like description, group, class, weight, dimensions etc).
Your transaction log is just a filter of the Part Tran table for that Part Number.
Try looking at the UD100 through UD110 tables. These are paired with UD100a through UD110a
There is a program called UD100 which is a parent/child relationship meaning you can have a one to many relationship… UD100 could be your equipment, UD100a (the child) could be the history. UD100 has 5 key fields (key1 - key5) and UD100a has another 5 child keys.
We do basically what @markdamen is suggestion. All of our tooling and fixtures are serialized and we use location transfer from tool room to team X and back. We run stock status and parttran reports to see where things are and how long since they have been returned. I don’t think I added any custom features to the process.
Thanks, everyone.
I’m getting the Maintenance module set up today, and am going to explore that route before investing any more time into a customized solution. I’ll keep you all posted with the outcomes!