Hello. We are currently using 10.2.700
I want to run PO suggestions generator without taking into consideration certain bins. I can’t use “non-nettable” option, please don’t ask why 
Any idea is welcome.
Why?
Agreed - why?
So you’re trying to hide inventory from PO suggestions so that it suggests you buy more than you need normally?
How come?
OK. Here is the reason: in the past making a bin “non-nettable” meant “parts are lost”. It was a certain amount of money so it became a synonim of something was not done right. So… no new “non-nettable” bins allowed.
But why are you trying to hide the inventory from PO suggestions now? Like why should that inventory not be considered available? Is it customer returns? Is it in inspection? or what?
Are the parts damaged? Then use the nonconformance process to get them out of inventory.
I hate non-nettable bins, too. But it’s BECAUSE they hide inventory.
Parts simply don’t exist. When this happened, instead of making an adjustment the were moved to a non nettable bin. This was about… 4 years ago. Then some other parts were lost so… they were move to a regular bin. Now buyers have to check part by part, using a summarized BOM report.
That doesn’t make very much sense. Why do you have parts that don’t exist? If they don’t exist how are they in a bin and why do they need to be hidden from PO suggestions?
Obviously the better path is to adjust out the parts. But someone must be opposing this for some reason, like the parts are expensive and it would look bad to corporate if we wrote off that much money, etc.
So you need a coverup.
Well, what if you made a new part number for these imaginary parts - same standard cost as the old ones - and then did a job to turn the missing parts into the new number. It’s still on the books at full value, but it’s a different part. (Or if you use last or average cost, I assume that would work automatically.)
I mean, if the parts are gone, whether they were damaged, used incorrect, tossed in the dumpster or into the back of someone’s truck, then they should be adjusted out, anything else, non-nettable bin, making up fake part numbers, etc is just hiding a problem which could blow up into an even bigger problem if insurance were ever to be involved or if you are a publicly traded company.
We’re going off the rails on a crazy train.
I totally dislike the idea of “hiding” inventory instead of adjusting it out. This breaks all sorts of financial rules. you are retaining inventory value that you dont truly have, and therefore an auditor would not appreciate this tactic.
To quote myself… “you lie to the computer, and it will lie back”. by “hiding” the inventory, you are not really taking into account the real problem. the REAL problem is that you dont have the quantity. You need to adjust it out of stock. This will then also remove the cost as well. this will then allow MRP to do its job.
STORY TIME:
I once had a customer who didn’t like the fact that there was partially finished jobs still showing in the Open Jobs backlog. These jobs were jobs that were not finished, but also that they were never going to finish because the parts had failures. What they SHOULD have done is to close the jobs short, thereby charging the balance in WIP to a variance.
BUT they had their IT Dept do modify the Job Backlog report to HIDE all the unfinished jobs. THERE… “PROBLEM SOLVED”…
FOUR YEARS LATER… I was onsite, and they asked why the backlog report only showed $2-million in WIP, but their GL account for WIP showed $8-million in WIP. “There must be a bug in the report” was what they said.
I examined and found the little “adjustment” their IT Dept made in the report to hide the partially finished job. When I removed this little gem.. the GL and the Report magically matched again. THEN they realized that they had $6 Milling of WIP that was really supposed to have been scrapped. Their VP of OPS asked me what to do. I said “Close the jobs.. they are not really in wip”. His face went white… they had a Board meeting that night. He had to tell them that they just took a $6 million loss over the last 4 years that they didnt know about.
I returned the next week… the VP of OPS was no longer there, and I believe the CFO was on the way out. Instead of reporting a profit for the past four years, they now were in a loss situation.
Moral of the story: Dont hide the information. Process the transactions as they occur. make it right.
End of Story time.
Agreed this is not kosher - if they are gone physically then they need to be adjusted out electronically.
So what I have seen is where you have tons of wire harnesses at revision A and then plenty more at revision B, and rev A is no good anymore but every time someone wants to address the issue it hits some wall (too much money to throw away; not feasible to rework; hopeless romanticism that we could sell them and get 60% of what we paid).
Well they all show as the same part number(s). (I know, we can track by revision now, but let’s just say that’s not an option or whatever.)
So it’s a similar scenario, where half of the parts under those numbers are good as dead, but no one has the guts to eat the cost.
Do you penalize the buyers/planners because of management failure?
No, definitely don’t mod the reports to hide the info. And you can’t exactly trick MRP, except with a non-nettable bin.
But if you can’t win the fight, I dunno, maybe you give your coworkers the least terrible alternative, like a part number called 00000_MISSING_PARTS that satisfies the requirements given but looks absolutely terrible and floats to the top of all reports so that eventually the right person will get the hint. You can obey your supervisors and be stubbornly rebellious at the same time.
And document it in a help ticket or something.
one other way to “hide” parts is to create a new SITE (Hidden parts site) and move the quantity into that new site. This way you can keep track of the things that you dont have, and then MRP will ignore all the items in the new site. Then also, your auditors will have a list of parts that they can write you up on 
already predefined. OR… you could simply take the total value of everything in that site, and do a journal entry to write off those values.
Exactly!
Then start finding your next job before fiscal year end.
Also, this is exactly how I feel about non-nettable bins.
They always start out with some reasonable-sounding goal (“We will transfer red-tagged parts there and then do the nonconformance to pull from that same bin and audit the quantity regularly”).
Then no one manages the bin and it just becomes a huge black hole for inventory. Or conversely if you allow negative quantity, the non-nettable bin will create inventory out of thin air. (Not financially, but in quantity.)
If it’s bad, then DMR it.
If it’s installed, issue it to a job.
If it’s boxed up to ship, put it on a pack slip (or maybe make a job and issue parts to it, if it takes many days to pack everything).
Otherwise, it’s here, so count it.
Also - did you know parts can get backflushed from a non-nettable bin? That was a fun discovery.
I totally agree with you. It is not my desicion to adjust inventory. I am just trying to make the system usefull for the purchasing team. Thanks for the story.
So, let me summarize what I think I just read.
You (the royal “you” as in your company.. not you personally) used to use Non-Nettable bins to drop things out of inventory because they were lost. The powers that be saw that, didn’t like it, and now you are no longer allowed to use non-nettable bins because that was used in a bad way.
Fast forward to today, you are being asked to to dump inventory into bins that are hidden (like non-nettable) but not called non-nettable. Essentially doing the same bad thing that you were doing before but by a different name?
Sounds like you should tell the person who banned the use of non-nettable bins what is going on so you can really fix the issue.
That being said, you can probably move the ghost parts to inspection (via non-conformance) and actually track lost parts and disposition them as actually lost. I believe (I would have to check to be sure) that parts that are in inspection aren’t considered available and so should do what you want.
I’m jumping on the “you should adjust your inventory” bandwagon.
I under the financial side of it, but why run an inventory system if it isn’t accurate?