MRP is ignoring supply and pushing UNF jobs out by the total lead time of the constrained material.
Let me give a shot at explaining this…
Need Raw Material on 2/5/2021 (MRP generated material need by date in order to deliver the parts on time)
Raw Material PO Releases begin to arrive 3/5/2021 (releases continue ever couple of weeks 3/5 is the earliest)
Rather than MRP using this late supply due to arrive 3/5/2021 to create UNF Jobs. ATP completely ignores the 750+ parts that accumulate in inventory starting on 3/5/2021 and begins to release the planned UNF jobs 425 days from today. (425 days is the raw material lead time).
It appears that since the Raw Material is to arrive late, MRP basically pushes the UNF jobs out the exact amount of days as the Raw Material lead time.
This makes no sense to me. I understand the Material is late, however, we cannot pull it it and it will arrive 30 days late. Any MRP system would just use the late material since it is the earliest source of supply.
Any insight? This is a show stopper for us and Epicor has been no help. They are just as confused as I am. Maybe even more so…
The material IS constrained on the BOM. I understand that the UNF Job would be pushed out since the material would not be available on 2/15/2021. However, traditional MRP logic would grab the first available supply in the future. In this case 3/15/2021. The job should then finish 1 month late.
What’s confusing me, is that the Jobs are being pushed out 425 days (the entire Raw Material Lead time) from the MRP run date. When there is plenty of inventory available well before that coming from open PO releases. It’s just totally ignoring them.
Tanks for the replies so far guys. Hoping we can get to the bottom of this.
Andy,
There is no value in the Mfg Lead time box. The logic must still be using the Purchasing lead time because the job start dates are exactly that many dats out. Trouble is, they “should” be starting in March when the first PO release is due to arrive.
Gil,
I will take a look at Buy to Order. Reading the field help doesn’t she much light on the functionality. I’ll have to dig a little deeper and test. Will report back.
Art, have you considered the Purchase Order Threshold Rule and checked your setting of the Supplier Due Date Horizon for the applicable supplier?
Purchase Order Threshold Rule
*One key feature of the Available to Promise calculation is that it does not include, as a potential source of supply, incoming amounts from any purchase order release that is considered “late”, based on the setting of the Supplier Due Date Horizon field (as defined for the associated supplier in the Supplier Maintenance > Supplier > Detail sheet, or as defined in the Site Maintenance > Planning > Detail sheet if none exists for the supplier). *
*This setting defines the number of days from the purchase order (PO) release due date that the Scheduling engine considers purchase orders for this site to be late. Available to Promise (ATP) and Capable to Promise (CTP) also use this setting to determine if incoming purchase orders should be considered in their calculations. *
For ATP calculations, it subtracts this factor from the current system date to calculate an acceptable horizon date window, and then compares each PO release due date to the calculated horizon date window.
I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that if that material is checked as Buy to Order, it will ignore existing inventory and tell you to (get this) - buy to order!
Scott, that does sound exactly like what is happening. However, I noticed this feature a couple of days ago and set this value to 999 and this issue still presents it self for some parts. As a note this value is blank for all suppliers. So per the description, the logic should use the Site value.
Make to stock is not the same as the “Buy to Order” checkbox, at least in my limited understanding. Does the purchased item that is constraining your plans have the checkbox selected?
Gil, Buy to Order is not checked for this part. Correct me if I am wrong, but the way I understand it is that Buy to Order is used for parts that are sold to a customer. In our case, this is a raw material that is purchased to stock and issued to a job.
Here is how field help explains Buy to Order.
Designates if this is a Buy To Order (BTO) part for which purchase order suggestions should automatically be generated each time you sell it and then run the Generate PO Suggestions process. This check box is unavailable for parts defined as sales kits.
What I would expect is for MRP to use the incoming supply to plan Unfirmed jobs. As you can see the Jobs have a required date of 3/30/2021. But are planned to release 10/15/2021. Exactly 324 days from today. 324 days is the material leadtime. It is like ATP is completley ignorring the PO supply and thinks I need to order material today and receive it in 324 days.
So it appears that you need to have “Pull as Assembly” checked off for all phantom parts within a BOM or MRP will not treat them as intended. We do not mark that box for non-phantom parts so we never thought to do it for phantoms. This seems to have fixed the issue.
