I know how to receive serial-tracked parts. I am asking what is the procedure at your company.
Here’s the story. We receive a dozen or so engines a day. And a dozen or so transmissions. And a dozen of this part and that. So we are processing dozens of serials a day through receiving.
How do we do it now? Manually enter every one into Epicor from paper.
I know what you’ll say: “Jason, haven’t you heard of bar codes? They solve every problem known to mankind!”
No, they sure don’t.
We deal with some little mom-and-pop shops called Cummins, Allison and Meritor, for example, and they are the worst offenders. See PDF attached if you don’t believe me. The bar codes literally do not match the text printed below them, or even what is in the box. And scanning them all by hand is madness, as some serials are obscured by their transport racks or stacked high in the air.
So, what do you all do? Do your suppliers send a file? Or do they send a printed sheet with barcodes for easier data entry?
Just to speak to some of the barcoding here… 043Y, 1S and S are all identifiers used in barcodes like GS1 standards for example. Them being missing on the human readable part is unfortunate. However, they are expected to be programmed around, and lots of larger companies use these codes to identify separate data in a single barcode.
Your best chance of understanding the coding from the company is going to be their documentation. You’d expect Cummins would be large enough to have this information for you, but you know what they say about assumptions.
As seen in this image, you can have multiple identifiers per barcode, so you know where the data belongs.
@zachg brings up an excellent point. If your supplier is set up using GS1 standards, then your company should be using GS1 standards. If you are a member or GS1 (or whatever the organization is called), all of the information required for breaking down another companies barcode is available.
GS1 is the international organization that determines all of the rules for barcoding. It is generally more of a consumer product thing, but they also cover using barcodes for logistics. It is very detailed.
Why not enter the Supplier Part Number in Epicor so when you scan it identifies it as a xref part number?
Besides barcodes, I’ve seen this in EDI or in Amazon’s situation, their web service portal. This is usually done like a PCID. A document is sent (ASN) that contains the packaging information (skid IDs, Box IDs, Lot/Serial) all nested. A single barcode read should tell you everything you need.
I more used to sending these to the big box retailers, Amazon, auto companies but I’ve never been in a place to request them from the customer. I have never tried to receive a PCID. (Can we?) If so, you could take the EDI document and pre-fill the PCID ahead of time and when the shipment arrives, receive it.
P.S. I live near Meritor’s offices in Troy, MI (and even consulted there during Y2K - they were installing Oracle ERP back then… ). I can swing by and give them a piece of your mind if you want me to.
Ugh, I don’t like that you are right. That would work. Not a fan of that, but I guess we are stuck there.
Meaning, receive a supplier-generated PCID? This is fascinating to me if it is possible.
This was on the heels of the last statement, but I’m still confused - you mean there exists software to do all this? Or a person would need to intercept an email and translate it to Epicor?
Ha, that’s great, but we actually deal with Meritor’s custom division in Laurinburg, NC.
Yes this is most definitely a thing. We send these codes in our EDI ASNs to some customers that request and use them. The standard I am familiar with is SSCC-18. Epicor has a built in way to generate these codes within the Legal Number functionality, when a shipment is created. We print a label that has this code on it, and when the shipment arrives they just scan one bar code and poof everything receives. I’ve never requested or ingested one of these codes but it seems like it should be possible.
). I can swing by and give them a piece of your mind if you want me to. 
