I am exploring the various configurations related to Job Planning automation. Among other things, our objective is to be able to identify:
Jobs that can be firmed and released because there are no material shortages
Of the Jobs that cannot be released on time, what are the gating items?
I’ve got some external queries that provide this information and are very accurate. However, they require generating temp tables, which obviously are not “live”, so I’m investigating Epicor tools that will provide the same information within the Epicor application.
Based on my readings, “Constrained Materials” should, at the very least, show me jobs that can be started on time based on material availability, and those which cannot. However, this does not appear to be the case.
There are a number of jobs, all with constrained materials = true, which have accurate Purchasing Lead Times and accurate open PO due dates (i.e. not past due) that show they can start tomorrow even though they have material shortages.
Some jobs are scheduled exactly as expected, with a start date = to today’s date + purchasing lead time for material shortages, but many do not.
Todd, we are investigating constrained materials also. I looks like it comes into play during the job scheduling, looks at availability and the add the material lead time into the job scheduling process. so you may have the materials for operation 10 and the schedules as you expect, but then operation 20 does not have a material available and if it is marked constrained then that operation will not start until after the material arrives. This causes a gap between the operations is seems.
To find jobs that can be scheduled with full material availability we are starting to use the Fulfillment Workbench (we are in a make to stock mode). on that workbench use the job fulfillment tab to find the next week of jobs to review and then workbench will calculate the material availability. only schedule the jobs with 100% materials available.
Regarding "To find jobs that can be scheduled with full material availability " Have you tried using Production Planner Workbench to view jobs with full availability? At my plant we also use a BAQ search within Job status Maintenance to list all un-firmed jobs, that are ready to firm and release with full availability.
Sample of BAQ
select
[JobHead].[JobNum] as [JobHead_JobNum],
[Person].[Name] as [Person_Name],
[PPlanHed].[JobNum] as [PPlanHed_JobNum],
[JobHead].[JobReleased] as [JobHead_JobReleased],
[PPlanHed].[Shortage] as [PPlanHed_Shortage],
[PPlanHed].[PartNum] as [PPlanHed_PartNum],
[PPlanHed].[PartDescription] as [PPlanHed_PartDescription],
[PPlanHed].[ProdQty] as [PPlanHed_ProdQty],
[PPlanHed].[ReqDueDate] as [PPlanHed_ReqDueDate],
[PPlanHed].[StartDate] as [PPlanHed_StartDate],
[PPlanHed].[DueDate] as [PPlanHed_DueDate],
[PPlanHed].[ProdCode] as [PPlanHed_ProdCode],
[PPlanHed].[Plant] as [PPlanHed_Plant],
[PPlanHed].[SchedCode] as [PPlanHed_SchedCode],
[PPlanHed].[PriorityFactor] as [PPlanHed_PriorityFactor],
[JobHead].[JobFirm] as [JobHead_JobFirm],
[Person].[PersonID] as [Person_PersonID],
[Person].[EMailAddress] as [Person_EMailAddress],
[PPlanHed].[Company] as [PPlanHed_Company]
from Erp.PPlanHed as PPlanHed
inner join Erp.JobHead as JobHead on
PPlanHed.Company = JobHead.Company
and PPlanHed.JobNum = JobHead.JobNum
and ( JobHead.JobReleased = 0 and JobHead.JobFirm = 0 and JobHead.JobNum like ‘U%’ and JobHead.PartNum > ‘0’ )
left outer join Erp.Person as Person on
JobHead.Company = Person.Company
and JobHead.PersonID = Person.PersonID
where (PPlanHed.Shortage = 0)
order by PPlanHed.Company, PPlanHed.StartDate, PPlanHed.SchedCode, PPlanHed.PriorityFactor, PPlanHed.JobNum
We are looking to implement Epicor and going live with constrained parts. We hit an issue with lead times of 87+ (odd number I know) days and constraints but we’ve resolved it now. I am pretty sure we encountered a software bug. Since then, all is behaving as expected with constrained material. Just wondering if you ever discovered the issue as to why some of your jobs were not honouring material constraints?