I am wondering how we will call for cut lengths and widths of bar and sheet stock in our BOM’s.
Here is an example: Say I have an assembly part of a support stand, made out of several pieces of 2x2x1/4 angle, maybe some 4x4x3/8 angle and a couple pieces of 12 gauge or 1/4" plate. And there is a mix of cut sizes in there. So when I create my parent (assembly) part I call for (item 1) one piece of 2x2x1/4 angle 36" long. In our old system, we would just enter the cut length and the system would do the calculation to convert it to the inventory UOM of pounds. (36" / 12 * 3.19 = 9.57 pounds of material for this item. In Epicor, there is no way to just call out the cut lengths and have it do the conversion to the inventory UOM. Similarly, maybe item 2 is two pieces of 12 gauge steel at 16" x 9.5".
Hopefully this makes sense. I don’t see any easy way of doing this in Epicor. And yes we are working with an implementation consultant but he is just learning of how we want to do this and hasn’t come up with the solution yet. He did mention something about possibly using a BAQ and/or user defined fields on the form.
Any ideas? We have hundreds of thousands of BOM items in this format to migrate/import.
For the Angle Iron, what are your UOM’s? EA (as in each 10’) or by length (as in 10FT)?
One thing to consider is the fractions of full lengths left over after removing some.
Assuming it came in 10 FT lengths and your IUM is FT, a job that requires (5) 6 FT lengths would only think that you need 30 FT in stock. But (3) 10 FT pieces will not satisfy the job. (Assuming you wouldn’t join pieces together)
FWIW - Your problem is not a simple one, and many have stumbled hard trying to address. And few are ever fully satisfied with their solution.
The UOM for angle iron would be either IN (inches) or LB (pounds) and that is ok, but it still doesn’t allow for us to specify the cut sizes. If item 1 is 48" of total quantity, is that one piece @ 48" or 4 pieces @12" ? Or some other combination.
The last part of your answer I think is THE answer I’m afraid!
And when I said ‘BAQ’ before, I meant to say ‘BPM’. That is what our consultant mentioned. Some sort of customization.
If the IUM is in inches, then specify the qty in inches. If you need (4) 12" pieces, you can either make a single MtlSeq
MtlSeq Oper PartNum QtyPer UOM 10 10 ANGLE2X2 48 IN
Or make 4 MtlSeq lines
MtlSeq Oper PartNum QtyPer UOM 10 10 ANGLE2X2 12 IN 20 10 ANGLE2X2 12 IN 30 10 ANGLE2X2 12 IN 40 10 ANGLE2X2 12 IN
If you have a specific operation for cutting, you probably want to do 4 lines
the benefit of the later, is that it is obvious that the job could be fulfilled from (2) pieces that are 2 FT long. Whereas the first method implies that you need a 4 FT piece
Epicor is assuming that each piece has it’s own part number. So your parent assembly would have a list of part numbers, each with it’s own material and length. Basically instead of a cut list, you would get a list of part numbers giving you the same information. If you have a part number and a cut list, maybe you just take the parent part number, then append that with the cut list item for the list of parts that go into your parent part. That would get you individual parts to cut. You could also do the multiple material lines like @ckrusen suggested.
As far as the conversions go, while it should be simple to convert units, and Epicor does have a means to do that, but it is riddled with bugs. I would recommend stocking and issuing material all in the same units. Even converting from inches to feet is a problem because they don’t have the rounding rules set up correctly so it causes problems.
Probably not what you wanted to hear, but that’s what I know from experience after fighting with the same issue.
Thanks all. Sounds like there is no easy way to do this. I sort of thought this might be the case since we have a somewhat custom implementation now in our current system. It works well but sounds like it is going to be a challenge to try and do the same thing in Epicor. I’ll have to do some more experimentation and get more familiar with the system in the mean time.
Sorry read this through a few times and whilst I understand your issue I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve - is it costing based on part weight, determine how much material you need to buy or how you transact from inventory to a job.
We are a steel fabricator and we use things like angle, round bar, I beam etc and cut to specific length, but much more like Brandon suggested, in your example each part making up the support stand assembly would have a manufactured part # - so if we need four legs of the same length we would 4 x the manufactured part, which would use a portion of a full length of the raw material.
Here would be how we would do it in our current system:
ITEM—PART NO ----DESCR--------------------# OF PCS----LENGTH-------WIDTH
1 300-050 ANGLE 2X2X1/4 2 12IN
2 300-050 ANGLE 2X2X1/4 3 16.75IN
3 300-098 ANGLE 3X3X1/4 4 48.5 IN
4 314-016 7 GA SHEET 1PC 12 IN 62.375 IN
5 314-012 12 GA SHEET 2 PCS 23.5 IN 40 IN
…and so on.
So we have fields in the database for number of pieces, cut length, and cut width ON the BOM item. So we DON’T create a part number for each BOM item. We just use the raw material (stock) number and call out it’s length and/or width. The thinking was - ‘why create a part number for all of these BOM items that are just cut pieces of steel’? We would literally have millions of part numbers. So we just use the stock number and call out it’s length/width instead (in engineering). The system then, converts the engineering UOMs to inventory UOM. For example, item #1 - 2x2x1/4 angle, 2 pcs at 12" - it would convert that to POUNDS by: 2 x 12 = 24" / 12 = 2 ft then 2 ft x 3.19 lb/ft - 6.38 lb. So inventory would know the quantity used and engineering can call out the material in cut sizes. Each stock material has it’s own conversion between engineering UOM and inventory UOM.
Note that we also have ‘regular’ parts which are called out in EACH (bearings, sprockets, etc) but for this discussion I am just talking about the raw material.
Like I said, this was a customization to our software which we have been on for many (many) years … (like 30 lol). But for this situation it works well. Again the thinking is why create a part number for a piece of angle 17.6875" long when we can just call out the piece of angle?
And the cut sizes are important because they are what our cutoff department uses to cut the material, so being fields with data, we can show them on a report for cutting. We can also revise and/or update the cut sizes and the quantity will update.
Anyways - hope this very long description helps! I think I covered everything.
Really depends where you are going to use this data - particularly if it is not in system based processes like MRP/PO suggestions
Assuming you would buy full length/sheet you could put the weight of a purchased length/sheet against the part master record and somehow calculate from there on reports/dashboards.
Alternatively use the partlength, partwidth and partheight database fields on the erp.part table- we are on an old version of E10 and these fields are not displayed on the part master screen but can easily be linked to custom fields. You put these dimensions on the raw material part master and use these fields to calculate what you need for cut/weight.
These will work in reports/dashboards where you do the calculation but will not have any impact on MRP/PO suggestions - the only option for them would be the UOM conversions and as Brandon states this is not a flawless process.