Interested in your process/solutions/commiseration on keeping planning parameters updated in Epicor

What processes do you have in place at your company to keep planning parameters and vendor info updated when you have frequent changes? Talking about things like lead times, supplier price lists, MOQs, vendor contact information, etc. Everything that makes MRP give you the right answer and simplifies the process of generating the POs.

Of course first priority is always placing the urgent POs, so even if required of the buyers to keep their parts and vendors updated, it simply doesn’t happen (too lean).

Are other people successful with a single dedicated person who just goes around updating stuff for everyone? Other solutions? I’ve seen at many companies in the past, even if there is focus around updating everything, it ends up being a one-time project where everyone works really hard to update stuff and then from there it falls apart because its impossible to sustain that level of effort. And it becomes a vicious cycle where the more out of date the information, the more time wasted validating po suggestions/generating POs, the less time available to update.

On a basic level we have for parts a dashboard where strange values (0 or empty) are highlighted. Each part has a planner (manufactured parts for production planner and purchased parts for procurement specialists). We have a process where new part is entered by engineer and then reviewed by the part owner filing all settings for parts (purchasing and planning settings). There is an email sent to a certain list of people who then validate the part (procurement, planning and finance). Then the dashboard shows values where it does not make sense and there is a name behind it.

This was done years before we learned about BPMs and Automation Studio. I know a company who has BPMs that do checks every night for all parts for example and send out emails to process owners to fix things. A lot of rules, but in the end the data quality is improving

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