Issue: We do not get any demand signal for when custom packaging needs to be made. What is the best way to use Epicor to trigger this demand without making it a line item on the sales order?
Description: We used to put packaging items as lines on sales orders. So you would have a line for part 1234 and another for part 1234-packaging. The customers requested that we stop putting the packaging as a separate line so now we do not know when to start production on the packaging or how many to make.
Possible solution: Create a checkbox in orderdtl that is checked when that particular line requires packaging. It would send out an email with the details of the line and the quantity. A dashboard would display all of the open lines with that checkbox checked. The engineer could pick from the dashboard which jobs to create and it would match up those jobs to the sales order.
Any reason why this solution would not work? Are there any other solutions I should propose to the engineers?
The issue is that when sales gets an order, they do not modify the BOM to add the packaging. We make our products to order so it would be very difficult to go through the thousands of part numbers in our system to add the packaging to the BOM if we might never get an order for that part again.
In the future, we should put the packaging in the BOM but I am not sure how to handle the old parts being ordered again.
Assuming that all parts need packaging and not being sure of how you do your scheduling, you give give the old parts a different planner code (Person ID) to identify those without packaging on the MoM. Easy way to delineate the parts with/without packaging. The Engineers working on the job could take it from there as they will see the planner code in the Job. Also, if you wanted to give the Engineers a heads-up for what is coming (if you do any prep work for the packaging operation) you could build a dashboard filtering on that planner code.
How do you know now that a Part on an Order needs packaging?
If the same part gets ordered next week, will it need packaging as well?
Is the person creating the Order also creating the Job, or are you waiting for MRP and a planner then firms the job?
So we add ours to the MOM as material and set it to related op PACK.
If the order entry person does not create the job and they are the only person at the time that know packagin is required, then I would set a checkbox on the Order Release and in the comments or some UD field add the part number of the packaging, and have them check it. Then when the planner tries to FIRM the job, BPM to check if Checkbox is True, if So, display info with PN of packaging. This will notify the planner to add the packaging to the job. Of course this will only work if you are Make Direct.