The question I have for you all is – The products that we manufacture here would each have a Certificate of Analysis which is linked by a Lot Number.
Not every customer would require these, it all depends on the import requirements – but what I am trying to do is, to get Epicor to print the Cert’s per Lot number per product per Invoice issued.
The certs are manually done at the moment, these can be exported to a PDF file….
If anyone has any ideas on how to handle this it would be great….
Our COA’s are tracked by Part Number but generated by lot. We use Inspection Attributes and Specification Maintenance to store the data. We have a modified Master Pack Packing Slip that shows the parts, lots and specification data for the lots per shipment.
Another option would be to extend the PartLot table to include your specification data and to record it when the lot’s are created.
And when is the Cert actually created? Shortly after production, or only upon demand (i.e. to include with packer and/or invoice, when specific customer needs it)?
Thank you for your question… At the moment we would ship from stock…
The cert’s are currently manually done after the invoice has being done, as per customer requirements…
We could have 50% of customers needing these certs and is a timely process to print out for example 30 Certs per shipment… And as you can imagine human error will always have a part to play - This is what i am trying get get rid of…
Couple of things come to mind. The extension of the PartLot table, or adding a child UD table - both using a UD form to collect the data - would allow collecting the data at any point after the Lot was created. Then it could just be a subreport or alternate report style of the packing slip to be generated during shipment. And with a UD field on the Customer (or Order) to indicate if the certs need to be printed).
If the data collection process requires another application for whatever reason, then the PDF file could be attached in a document management system and indexed to the Lot number, and printing them from the document management system would be easy enough - and possibly automated.
Lastly, to extend the second idea, if you have DocStar & APR there are ways to automate the process as part of printing the PDFs when printing either the pack slip or invoice. And Epicor’s PartLot table allows for attachments, so storing the PDFs would be easy enough, as well as automated through a number of mechanisms including file drops into a folder (using the DocStar workflows).
Good question too, as we are looking at how to do this with a few of our products as well. It won’t be exactly the same but close enough for a good thought process exercise.