Hello Epicor Users - this is my first post in THIS forum so I apologize if I break any etiquette here…
I have been trying for some time to get a Purchase Order out of Epicor that includes Demand Information. In most cases this would be a Sales Order number and the top-level parts from that order. Obviously, demand can originate in from several sources including Sales Orders, On-Hand Quantity mins, etc, etc. I would be happy seeing only Sales Order demand sources.
As you can guess, this one gets complex fast. Plus our BOMs have many levels.
I have even tried outsourcing this problem to an “Epicor export”. Many thousands $s later, I still have no joy.
Anyone have anything like this they use?
I would like to be able to tell on the PO why we are suggesting the part purchase. This doesn’t seem like an unusual request to me.
Thanks!
Do you want to see this info in the screen or on the actual report? In either case if it’s demand created from a PO Suggestion there are order key fields in the PO tables that you can use to link back to an Order/Line/Release. Just link them up and display what you want.
I will give the PO tables a try. My dream is to put the Demand info on the PO. The time phase information, as I recall doesn’t give a PO or top-level demand part info. Just the job demand info.
I have reviewed every table I could find with “PO” in the name of the table. I cannot find any order key fields or any fields that appear to reference the top-level part or the demand origination part.
If that exist I agree it would shortcut the process. But I am afraid it will take a hefty programming effort to solve this one.
messy…On-Hand Quantity mins
Can I assume you have a mix of Stock and Non-Stock parts to report demand for?
If so, please post any solution you come up with.
I remember working on some dashboards to try helping purchasing identify demand sources mroe quickly. i.e. to reduce the investigation, time phase look-ups.
Stock parts were the big headache and I had to make assumptions/consolations.
Some help but really didn’t give them what they wanted (and still want) - that specific demand related to their specific suggestions/PO Releases.
In our case I was never sure if it was really feasible, since the “stock” parts are indirect by nature.
Every direction I came at this from would end up displaying general demand… for general purpose inventory that will be available for a range of demands/times.
jgeise.wci - this works if you use the Buy to Order function or checkbox on an Order Release. We don’t currently use that - although we might want to! I am testing the implications.
Unless you use that you are going to have a heck of time linking it. Then it is back to what Bruce said you can only show general information and it will be best guess. Buy to Order as far as functionality goes works great.
We have to do this for our DoD flowdowns and this is how to do it in 9.05. I have only installed 10 a couple of times so far and have not converted this into a 10 bpm yet, but here are the basics of how it works. Post processing on POSugg.GetRowsPlant
Check each PO suggestion, find the next suggestion for that part and then read all of the PartDtl records between the two suggestions and store those Jobs in a character field.
During Generate PO the info is moved from the PO suggestion to a UD table then retrieved after generation.
Preprocessing for POSugg.Generate the information is stored in a UD table with vendornum, partnum, due date and release quantity.
Post processing for POSugg.Generate Check each PORel that has not been marked as processed and matches on vendornum, partnum, due date and release quantity and transfer the information from the UD table to the PO.
We don’t use buy to order since it puts material on the job as soon as it is received rather than in inventory.
gpayne - this looks very interesting. I also want to user this for a similar reason (DOD-type trace) as well as simply knowing why we are buying parts!
I will give this a try - although I am already thinking the timing & cutoff aspects could be tricky.
I set a default end date of a year before I look for the next suggestion in case there is not one. Let me know if you want the E9 bpms and I will send them to you offline.
Here is something we do at one site that builds capitol equipment.
They need to use a lot “stock” parts too.
They also need to know which “machine build” their PO’s and sub Jobs are related to.
So they run MRP after that “machine” job is created. The resulting new Jobnums and PONums are copied into a UD table. Then we added multiple lookups/views. These are 100% accurate but good enough to get them in the ballpark. i.e. better than nothing.
The PO matching to job demand is in the routine below. I am just getting started in E10 and going to insights to learn C# bpms, so this has not been converted.