I’m trying to understand the best practice for managing production of a single part that requires operations at multiple sites within a multi-site Epicor environment. My main question is: How should the Method of Manufacture (MOM) and job structure be set up to handle operations that occur at different sites?
Hypothetical Example
Consider a single part with 15 operations:
Operations 1-5: Must be completed at Site A.
Operations 6-10: Must be completed at Site B.
Operations 11-15: Must be completed at Site A.
My current understanding is that this would require three separate jobs, one for each block of operations. If this is the case, does the part itself need to be split into three distinct part numbers (e.g., Part A, Part B, Part C) to be consumed and produced at each site? I’m trying to figure out how the scheduling and tracking of the single, final part would work across these inter-site transfers.
Our Real-World Challenge
Our company has highly complex products. Some parts have dozens of subassemblies, nested up to eight levels deep, with over 250 total operations. If we were to add a second site to Epicor, and some of the operations on a single part need to be done at Site A while others need to be done at Site B, what is the recommended way to structure the MOM?
Do we need a single, all-encompassing MOM that somehow references operations at different sites?
Or, as in my hypothetical example, do we need to break the MOM into multiple jobs and potentially multiple part numbers to handle the inter-site transfers and scheduling?
Any guidance on how this is typically handled in a multi-site Epicor setup would be greatly appreciated.
How set or concrete is having multiple sites? This can be easily done if you are working with multiple warehouses but not multiple sites. I know the separation using sites is usually financially driven for tracking, but we have always used different warehouses for going between sites, but our sites are a short truck drive away.
Unfortunately, I have not found a way to combine sites on a single MOM. Job Entry prevents claiming labor from a site that is not the job’s core site. I do not believe there is any native functionality for a multi-site job. However, if you do have 3 separate MOM’s, you can have MRP drive all the lower level jobs and create job suggestions in all the sites automatically.
I tested this out about three years ago, so don’t fully remember the exact setup.
You can do 1 part/1 method for the whole thing. What you need to do is have the same operations across sites. So, if you have an operation named Cut, you create that operation and add a scheduling requirement from each Site. When you create the method, select one of the scheduling requirements from the Site that you want the part to go to.
Like I said, it was 3 years ago I tested it out. But you need to have a scheduling requirement from each site on the Operation Master record. Then when you add the operation to a method (engineering workbench, I don’t believe this can be done on a job), select the scheduling requirement from the site you want. When the job is created, the system will know it is using another site and automatically create a transfer order from site to site, once the last operation in the first site is marked complete. Once you do the transfer order, you should be able to log into the operation in the other site.
The job was created by MRP from a method, but at Data Collection terminals, when they add the job in before they can even specify operation, it gave an error that the job was for a different site.
Question for someone who has multi-site. When you are on the landing page for Operation Maintenance, do you see all Operations across every site, or just the operations for the current site you are in?
Yes you can see all operations for all sites and if they are allowed in current site, However, in Kinetic 2025.1, there is hard stop in ENG workbench if you try to add an operation when you current site does not match the revision of the part. But you can still change the scheduling resources to be from a different site. But when you get to a Job and employees from a different site try to start production on that job, you get the job is not from current site error that prevents them from moving forward.
We are still implementing the 2nd site and haven’t had a chance to try to work through the details yet. I will say that it looks like it is going to have to be multiple jobs, with transfer orders between the sites…which is what we were expecting.
