One of the process automation done to replace SO/PO/AR/AP cycle between the Plants/Sites by using Transfer Order functionality reduced number of steps from 8 to 3 without missing any GL transactions and approval process. Each plant is treated as profit centre in this scenario as each plant sells products to other plant at a margin. One posting rule was changed to achieve this as the sales account was different for inter plant sales. When this was developed in Epicor, at the same time one of my friend developed similar solution in SAP which was 5 times costlier than Epicor.
Other solution developed was using Mobile dashboard where Service Technician selects customer, enter serial number and PO. Based on this info, sales order is created with three lines (Parts, Labour, and consumables), creates jobs with default parts, job released and assigned to service technician for recording time against that. This was developed before REST with Updatable BAQs.
If you get a chance, look at Quickbooks. I really admire their bank statement import, auto matching and ease of creating rules for auto matching on the fly.
Something that has piqued my interest are Jupyter Notebooks. Microsoft has them now for SQL Server 2019. Jupyter Notebooks got their start with people doing Data Science in Python. They are a combination of markdown (which this site uses) with Excel cells.
Do imagine walking through a document and running SQL code at the same time. For Epicor, this would be a FANTASTIC way to distribute SQL instructions for users who need to create an Epicor database. Instructions and code together.
The not-ready for primetime feature are .Net Notebooks. This means we can run .Net code in a Notebook, which means we can call REST from a Notebook, which means we can do Epicor Transactions. Think of the process of doing a payment run in Epicor. You have the documentation and the code together of which the results are saved all in the Notebook! The Group, the Edit List, etc. all in one place. Rules can be added to do extra business rule checking too. I think this is going to be very powerful by next year.
Lots of cool interesting things people are doing out there!
In terms of thinking of doing something, I have experimented with machine learning in Epicor. It was surprisingly accessible / not difficult to create a machine learning model and make use of it in Epicor. As a learning exercise I created a machine learning model to predict if a part was a fastener or not based on it’s description and a few other properties (but not part class). I then used the model in a BPM to warn the user if the model predicted the part was a fastener but was not in the fastener part class.
We have done a few interesting things with Epicor…
Used Service Connect to link Epicor to our SolidWorks Vault. If an engineer checks in a new revision job planners will be notified via email triggered from a BPM.
We have made a webservice that serves up part images. This was used in the email notification above so users can see what part it is that has changed.
We have equipment installed on offshore platforms / Rigs that move around the world and often work with little to no internet connection. To over come that we have developed an app that syncs Epicor data and makes it available when there is no internet connection. Users can update the data which is pushed back to Epicor via Service Connect once it is sync’ed back onshore.
We have a system to automatically scan in “as built” drawings and attach the pdf to the material on the job. Users print the drawings from Epicor (which inserts a barcode) then collects them all from the shop floor and bulk scans then to a folder. The system reads the barcode and attaches the scan to the correct job / material.
Have also automated our Manufacturing Report. After manufacturing is complete we produce a report that contains all the material certs, as built drawings, test reports etc, etc which at attached to the job. This report can many 100’s of pages long.
For us, this time really emphasized how much we needed to change our AP process, related to document handling and data entry. We had been doing everything manually, printing invoices when they come in, emailing / hand delivering to various places / people for approval, generally a mess overall and basically untrackable. Then we had a data entry person entering all the invoice data into Epicor.
We implemented a document management solution ( Docuware ) that is cloud hosted. With the software we can OCR, create workflows, track revisions to documents, and make web service calls.
Our process now is an AP Invoice gets sent from a supplier, to a monitored email address.
Docuware OCR’s the necessary data from the invoice; supplier, amount, purchase order etc.
Based on various conditions like location, invoice type, PO status, it routs to different people for approval, or for corrections that need made. During all this various pieces of data is checked and validated against Purchase Order, Receipt Pack, and GL data, using REST calls to Epicor.
Once all the criteria is set, an AP Invoice is created using REST, matched to the appropriate receipts / GL Accounts, and posted to the GL.
The invoice can now be paid using the normal Epicor payment process.
After invoices are paid, remittance info for the payment loads back to Docuware, and is linked to the paid invoices.
This was huge for us, everything is super trackable now at any stage, organized, and easy for our Accounting department do what they need to do to get our suppliers paid on time. We also saved an incredible amount of data entry time by automating the AP invoice creation process.
Last year we also implemented a project with our bank. We generate a payment batch in Epicor, and send it to them through SFTP.
They allow the suppliers to choose if they want to receive a one-time credit card payment, ACH or live check. The bank splits the payments, prints any live checks needed, mails them, and processes the payments.
We then receive remittance info back, which goes back into our document management, and matches the AP Payments and payment data with the AP Invoice.
We had to build a lot of timesavers to avoid having a major slowdown when we went live (Sorry Epicor…) and in support of a hybrid MTO, MTS, ETO, ATO ATS, manufacturing environment where the same product might be manufactured to order or to stock, shipped from stock or from a job, transferred in from another site, or purchased fully assembled, and that combination can change several times in the same day for a given product in a given site. We promise 3-5 day shipping and every job takes about 15 minutes, so not a lot of scope for paperwork.
Custom order entry to:
allow entering orders for all sites from the same screen
automatically select appropriate PartRev based on site (because labour resources are site-specific)
automatically check inventory for manufactured items and if present, unset “make direct” on the release
automate the tasks involved in changing order sites, including cleaning up and recreating jobs in the new site
Many BPMs including
automatically firm jobs created by MRP based on criteria, so that any negative available components show up right away
automatically reschedule jobs based on one of 5 order types
automatically send customer order confirmations with dates based on order types
Customized MES interface to match workflow
Custom production activity start and stop screens in MES to:
check for subassemblies we have decided to kanban receipt upon order
create and execute the KB receipts
roll up all the picking operations from all of the assemblies and execute them with a single human action
issue all the material for all of thoose picking ops
if material is not present in the primary bin upon issuing, automatically find it and move it before issuing
roll up all the similar ops downstream, and execute with a single human action
Custom Shipment entry to allow mass ship from a combination of jobs and stock on a given order
process to allow us to use sales kits with manufactured items
a dashboard to analyze demand for the sales kits, creating a grid to copy/paste into excel for DMT
custom picking sales order picklist to enable collecting sales kit items from stock or assembly line
Custom planner dashboard - the original workbench is so labor-intensive as to be unusable. We had 6 people full-time using it, and built a tool that allowed 5 of them to go back to their normal work
pulls up all jobs and child jobs for the day’s work
shows man-hours needed
planner selects a shop-floor day and hits save
tool sets the job date, releases the job, firms and releases the child jobs, sets mass print
typically allows assigning 200-300 jobs to 70-80 workers for the day, in about 1.5 hours
Those are the main projects but there are an awful lot more. I inherited over 160 customizations and some 40 BPMs. I’m sure most of them were not needed.
My next focus is automating any regularly occurring DMT, like the quick-job entry we use for sales kits. I’d rather create a job with a demand link to the line item in the sales order.
So cool to read some of these projects! I am have to steal some of these ideas for us.
A cool time saver that was here before I started is a screen that allows you to Issue Material to jobs and completes a Serial Match at the same time if your Top Level and Issued Parts are serialized. We will be revamping this process a little as it wasn’t built in the most efficient way, but the concept is solid. Personally I would love to see something like this in out of box Epicor as this isn’t the first place I’ve seen this need come up.
Here’s a list of things either in development or in the list of projects:
Fully electronic Device History Record report (Electronic DHR Traveler) for manufactured medical devices
This is replacing a completely paper process and should net 10% efficiency gains immediately, with potential for 20-25% efficiency compared to paper.
This was accomplished with EQA and Inspection Plans. There are some BPMs in place to ensure Devices (SNs) are being processed in the correct order along with some screen customizations to better streamline the OOB processing. Getting from MES End Activity to the Inspection plan through Inspection Results Entry is pretty clunky.
A key process improvement was a prompt for MES users in End Activity asking if they would like to stay clocked into the same Job Operation. If yes, it will complete the End Activity process then clock them back into the same Job Opr without any additional interaction. If no is selected, they are clocked out as normal.
Customer Complaint/Feedback tracking and processing linked to Service and Service History
A customized version of Cases that leverages OOB Field Service to work on customer devices and a UD table to track the service history of each device.
(Future project) Integration with Outlook Calendar Events and Epicor Time Entry for Engineers
This one is recent, but think will be huge for us. We want to allow engineers to use their outlook meetings as essentially their time card entries. The desire is for there to be enough detail within the Outlook Event to know if it’s billable work to a project or indirect time, and take the details and put those into the labor notes. This will bring a lot of efficiency to the current admin workload of our engineering team and hopefully lead to fewer time mistakes.
Like others in this thread, I inherited over 100 customizations. My goal has been to get rid of as many as I can so our upgrade validation is less rigorous, and take the required ones from custom code to wizard-based.
That AP automation sounds great any reason you did not look at DocStar? Also I bet the ROI is quick with that level of automation what have you managed to do with the free hours for people do they fee more on top of other aspects ?
Using machine learning to look at configuration data suggest changes monitor drift is certainly an area of interest and focus. Typically if the parameters in any ERP system are wrong the implications are quite high. Interested in other uses of ML anyone doing vision based quality checks or person monitoring
No worries, and always happy to demonstrate them or their code if it’s useful.
The problem - and it isn’t specific to Epicor - is that it seems to be easy to configure ERP for EITHER turning raw material into finished goods OR buying in containers and selling in pallets.
But in a hybrid model using Lean / TOC, it’s very challenging to capture and utilize data without slowing the process down. This is a major weakness that if resolved, could be a cornerstone of re-shoring manufacturing.
I think the use of Epicor as a customization framework is definitely on the right track, and it sounds like Functions will help that become increasingly accessible. However, the training and documentation available for configuring Epicor is expensive, limited, and very generic, l as far as I can tell. Sort of like taking PFMEA training when you really need a continuous improvement process. For example, I have invested heavily in figuring out what makes MRP tick, and worked on optimizing settings for two years, but at my company, we still are a long, long way from actually acting on PO suggestions - we end up doubling our inventory and still running out of parts.
Maybe you could have a bank of use cases of innovations, turned into tutorials - sort of like instructables.com by Autodesk. The technology is very adaptable, but some integration partners seem to insist on coding for every possible future contingency and charge an arm and a leg - and then don’t really support it later. If you could teach system admins how to version control, develop and deploy the many available possibilities, that would be worth a lot.
I forgot to mention one of our big admin projects that may sound small but will have a big impact on our company.
The problem is that Windows/MS and Epicor have completely separate credentials with no way to really, truly link these together. Being in a regulated industry, we need to have username/password checks at various stages in our process in order to be compliant with 21 CFR Part 11. Epicor can be easily configured to prompt for a password, but even with SSO, this will always be the Epicor password with no way to “passthrough” for the windows credentials of the user. This leads to our users having different passwords for windows and Epicor which can cause issues.
With some help from this forum, I believe we have a way to leverage Azure AD configurations inside Epicor to prompt for the Azure credentials instead of the Epicor credentials. This does require some code be added to the screens where this prompt is required, but will be huge in truly linking our users credentials. My only wish was that there was more out of box configuration to do this. There’s a way to link Azure AD to Epicor with configuration, but no deeper user configuration after that point.
We actually looked at DocStar, Docuware, and one other document management system. The project stakeholders liked the UI of docuware the most, and we have a long term relationship with our reseller from other projects and demos in the past.
From a technical side it is about the same to work with as DocStar, the built in functionality is pretty much the same, the workflow designer operates like every other workflow designer, etc.
The integration was the easiest part of the project really, our process was manual and undocumented so the hardest work was documenting the whole AP process, mapping everything out, and defining what the workflows need to be for all the different conditions.
Yes, the ROI was / is a winner. We were able to move those free hours to other more valuable tasks, and now we have a solution that will scale with our growth without significantly increasing the load for our Accounting department.
Nice… how far things have come.
I still keep my SNP adapter handy though, just in case. I think it was one of Horner’s first really successful products.
