Thanks for the suggestion on going into Crystal Reports and changing the
formula for the purchase order due date. My report writer was in
yesterday and it took her all of five minutes to change the formula. We
set all Job purchase order due dates to be 2 days prior to the date the
operation is to begin. We'll see how that goes then adjust it depending
on how it impacts our shop, etc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Anderson [SMTP:
tanderson@...]
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 9:37 AM
To: '
vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Material Due Dates
Steve, Joe,
About eight years ago I had the misfortune to be the IS manager
of a company
that produced textile machines using a S/38 with MAPICS for the
package. (
Actually, it wasn't all that bad. )
MAPICS off the shelf back scheduled almost exactly as you
describe.
Purchased components where scheduled to be delivered the day
BEFORE their
usage. Our Purchasing Manager, Production Control Manager, and
myself had
a meeting one day to try to deal with the issues of late
material and
components because it was killing us.
What we decided was:
* Even if material or components was delivered on the correct
day we
usually could not get it received, issued, and moved to the
assembly floor
by the next day. ( Big facility - Big parts )
* To assume that vendors would always deliver on exactly the
correct day
was LUNACY !!!
* That the idea of delivering components the day before usage
is a "Just
In Time" trip invented by accountants in the early 80's in
response to super
high interest rates and makes NO sense.
* That for us the best offset was to have material /
components scheduled
to be delivered 5 working days before we needed it. Very few of
our vendors
were more than 5 days late. Note that after a few months we
were talking
about extending this number to 10 days for extra cushion since
we were still
getting burned. ( I had left the company by this time and do
not know if it
was ever extended. )
* The solution for us was for me to modify the scheduling
routine in
MAPICS to automatically insert a 5 day buffer between all
purchased
components and the parent requirement date.
For Vantage I would suggest the following solution. Have
EPICOR add a
field to the "Job Management Configuration" screen ( SUM30-JC )
under the
Company Configuration. This field should simply say
"Purchasing Buffer =
##" where ## is a number of days. The delivered default would
be ZERO - as
in schedule deliveries on the day required. Setting this to ONE
would mean
that scheduled deliveries should be buffered to be delivered ONE
day BEFORE
parent requirement. Etc.
This would allow all Vantage customers to adjust the amount of
buffer that
works for them.
For most companies the cost of having materials / components
delivered 1 to
10 days before usage is negligible in terms of carrying cost.
The real
issues are whether you have room to store them and what your
vendor
performance is in regards to on time delivery.
If one of you wants to go to the trouble of calling something
like this in
as a suggestion let me know and I'll add my name to the list.
Todd Anderson
J. Rubin & Co.
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Konecny [mailto:
jkonecn@...]
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 7:31 AM
To:
vantage@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] Material Due Dates
This is a huge problem for us. The only thing you can do is
change it manually or set up an operation called "queue time"
and set it as the first op.
Steve Wirtz wrote:
>
> Does anyone have a solution for getting material due dates on
purchase
> orders to be the day before an operation is due to start,
other than
> having purchasing manually change the date?
>
> We are having a problem with scheduling due dates for
materials. The
> material due dates in Vantage are based upon the scheduled
start of the
> linked operation. It is difficult to have a work center ready
to start
> a job when the material is due on the same day. Most
deliveries even
> arriving in the morning are at best received and moved to the
floor by
> early afternoon. We have tried to make everything as close to
JIT as
> possible, but it makes no sense to set up work centers
(machines) until
> you know you have the materials needed. Many of our materials
are used
> in the final product assembly and pack-out. Pack-out
operations for us
> are labor intensive and require setting up a line ahead of
time. Also
> that is the one area we would rather have many materials
arrive on time
> or one day earlier.
>
> You can't do it with lead time because that doesn't affect the
material
> due date which remains the same.
>
> You can add move time to a work center but not to a material
purchase.
>
> When we have another operation ahead of the one where the
material is
> needed, then we changed the material to link to the earlier
operation so
> we can get an earlier purchase order due date.
>
> Most of the raw material that is bought specifically for a job
is needed
> for the first operation and creating a "purchase or receive
material"
> operation should not be the only answer to an expensive
software
> product. Besides, that requires additional data collection
entries from
> some people that are already checking the materials and
receiving them
> against the purchase order. Many of our materials do not
require
> detailed inspections and a specific receiving inspection
operations are
> not warranted. Requiring Purchasing physically to change
every purchase
> order due date generated by Vantage seems to defeat the
purpose for a
> system that is supposed to make life easier.
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