Hi All,
I’d like to know if there is a way to allocate a lead time to an on-the-fly part which is purchased direct.
To me this seems like it should be simple but perhaps I’m going about it the wrong way?
Thanks in advance.
A purchase direct (i assume you mean to an operation on a given assembly within the job) will automatically make that a constrained resource and will fix the due date of the operation to that of the expected receipt date. This doesn’t exactly give you great visibility to what that lead time is directly from the job, you’ll have to look at it from the PO, but it will align your schedule accordingly. A more hacky but potential option is making it a subcontract operation which has lead time fields you can fill in and see on the schedule board, then make that a purchased item.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the response. It looks like the second option would be the one to go with, however am I right in thinking that it’s necessary to create two items with the same part number/name (The top level part AND the material inside it’s method) as in reality it is one thing (nothing happens to it when it gets to us before being sent out).
Sorry to jump in the middle, but I can’t find the lead time fields on a subcontract op that you referenced. There is a Days Out field, but that represents how long the operation itself takes. I don’t see a lead time field like there is for a purchased part.
Days out can be assumed to be the sub-contract lead time… days out = how many days the part will be absent from your plant while the supplier is doing the sub-contract work.
OK. I was hoping for a real lead time in addition to days out. “Real” lead time being the amount of time required to make arrangements with the vendor before the part is actually shipped out. If I pad the days out time to include lead time, then our scheduling is off because the system thinks that no work can be done while the arrangements with the vendor are being made. But if we leave days out as only the actual days out, then we will not make arrangements with the vendor in time to have to work done when we want it (unless we track it separately, which is kind of what we are doing now).
So you’re merrily building the finished part, and a few operations down the line is your outside op. For this outside op, you need to know 3 days ahead of time so you can call the vendor and make arrangements. That 3 days is pretty consistent, but you ALWAYS need it. You’ve got 3 more days worth of stuff to do before sending it out, which is shop time you don’t want to waste, and you are looking for some kind of signal that it’s now 3 days away and you’d better call that vendor. Is that the scenario?
- What kind of signal are you looking for (meaning who gets it and what do they get, an email or dashboard)?
- Is the subcontract PO already created at this point?
- Is the subcontract op scheduled in Epicor, meaning does Epicor know (that based on current information) it’s due to get out of the plant 3 days from now?
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I have seen some companies that pre-create the PO’s as soon as they firm up the job, which could be weeks ahead of actual schedule. They Print the PO, and put it with the shop floor traveler. That way, when it gets time to actually ship it, all the paperwork (except for shipping) is complete. The only thing that would possibly need done is to notify the supplier if the schedule changes.
Yep, that’s the scenario. I need to look more into what they are currently doing, but what I was hoping for was a PO suggestion that factored in the now non-existent lead time.
On the material side, when job gets scheduled, the system knows that Part A has to be ordered by a given date to accommodate its shipping time, etc. and the PO suggestions take that into account.
Right now there is a dashboard that lists all open jobs with outside ops, but it’s a pain for our scheduler to sort through that every day (we are a job-shop, so lots of jobs for small batch runs).
I will ask about that. Thanks for the idea.