I’m testing the capabilities feature.
We have a test stand for testing hydraulically driven equipment. It has 2 gear pumps in it. Smaller equipment can be run by a single pump… so you can test 2 smaller machines simultaneously. But larger equipment requires both pumps to be hooked together so you can only test 1 larger machine at a time.
My first thought was the resource group is Hydraulic Test Stand. There are two resources (the gear pumps). The operation is “Test Larger Hydraulic Equipment”. No one resource is “capable” to do this task on its own.
Any advice for how to set this up? The labor resource was fairly straightforward because it only requires one person with the hydraulic testing capability. Can I even do this with a capability or do I flat need to assign both gear pump resources to the operation for the larger machine?
Also, another question I’ll need to answer… hydraulic machines can be “open center” or “closed center”. The gear pumps only test open center machines. We also have a variable displacement pump (pump #3) on the same stand that only tests closed center machines. Should those be different resource groups? Different capabilities?
Question back to you would be if you have one open center pump and one large pump - you can only use the pump stand for one of the other, right?
You could do this two ways, but I feel like it depends on how you flow. If you set it up as one Pump Stand needed for all testing, then its operational time/standard is how long it takes to test one pump. Any delta in that, or your ability to test two small pumps at the same time because they are in the queue, equals a gain in production time. But because there will inevitably be the scenario where the pump stand is the bottleneck, I’m wondering if you want to plan it that way and take the bottleneck when it happens as a ‘hit’ to production time.
We have a similar problem when a device is used for almost all products and dynamically configured for each use based on the product, but it’s clearly a bottleneck for us, so we created it as a resource and gave it an average standard time. We take the gains and losses as they come and it seems to average itself out.
We didn’t use this a capability because in the end, it’s used for everything. You could (probably should) separate the variable displ pump as a resource and use capabilities to drive the operation to that device when needed instead of the Pump Stand.
We have two identical open center pumps in tandem on the same stand. Larger machines being tested requires both of them to be used together… smaller machines requires only 1 and thus 2 machines can be tested together. Our “standard” is the smaller machine, though. Probably 95% of the time or more we’re testing the smaller machines.
Re-reading this, maybe I misread the second part. You have one Pump Stand with three pumps - 2 gear and 1 variable displacement - and each product that comes to the operation uses that Pump Stand regardless of the configuration - might need 2 pumps, might only need one pump. But you cannot guarantee the order in which they arrive, only that 95% require only one pump, so theoretically you could test three products if they showed up in the right order - until a large pump shows up.
Can you use all three separately to test three products at the same time?
Is that how you want to schedule the pumps using capability?
I think I’d still take the hit when a larger pump comes along (5% of the time) because it will still consume the Pump Stand as a resource, and you could possibly still use the variable displacement pump to test another product (an unscheduled gain to production if that product is in the queue). The rest of the time, EVERY product needs the Pump Stand - so there is no need to drive it via a capability unless something else is going on. My opinion based on the data so far of course.
@MikeGross - thank you for your feedback!! It never fails I can read through posts for an hour and consult the tech ref guides, but it often still leaves a few minor details to be determined… and those details often matter… haha.
Yes. That’s where I was going.
Yes, every hydraulic machine must go through that pump stand.
So your thought is to just have 1 resource - the pump stand?
OR
The resource group is the pump stand, and it has 2 resources available.
And expect to be able to test 2 at a time basically at all times. Any closed center machine (rare) will be a gain (3 at a time perhaps) and any large open center requiring 2 pumps will be a hit but in theory they will even out?
I’m still a bit stuck on a single pump stand. Does that mean that a pump must be mounted to the stand to be used? If so, the actual stand is your bottleneck, and I’d see about creating 2 more pump stands - or 3 more stands if you can get another set of pumps and create a dedicated unit for testing the ‘large’ products. That would solve a lot of problems.
If it’s the stand - you are kind of hosed, since only one test can occur at a time. Option 1.
If it’s not the stand, then I’d go with Option 2.
We’d have to get into a bit more for me to fully understand your process flow, but never forget that you can CHANGE things to make it work better for you. You don’t have to fit/break Epicor all the time, you could make a few more stands if you need them. We have a CNC milling operation that has two lathes and one operator. In the scheduler it is seen as 1 lathe + operator. The Op’s job is to figure out how to best use both lathes given what’s in the queue - and he always ‘makes money’.
Yeah I’m sorry if I’m confusing you. I appreciate you taking time to respond.
I have it testing in our Pilot environment and it’s working well so far.
Just for any future reader and in case you were still curious. Our hydraulic test stand tests the hydraulically driven motors. The equipment we manufacture has a hydraulic motor inside that is intended to mount to a truck that has a hydraulic pump on it. Our test simulates this setup. 1 pump for 1 motor is required (except for the big guys… then 2 pumps are required to test 1 motor). We have 3 total pumps on our test stand. 1 tester. The 1 tester is able to run 3 machines concurrently, if they are the right machines. As I detailed above, there are different capabilities. It is a bottleneck, but not as bad as it sounded originally.
This is an interesting one. If you can test three parts at the same time, I believe I would set it up this way.
Resource Group - Pump Stand
Resources - Open Pump 1, Open Pump 2, Closed Pump 1
Operations - Small Open, Large Open, Closed
Then I would have the Small Open operation have 1 pump as a resource. The Large Open have 2 pumps as the resources. And the Closed would only have the 1 pump.