I am trying to change the Est. Prod Hours for certain operations in our BOO to use Fixed Hours instead of Setup Hours as it will more accurately reflect our production process. All of the operations that I am trying to change are Time - Backflush Qty as the labor entry. The issue that we are encountering is that once we change these operations from Setup Hours to Fixed Hours, the operations will not be marked as complete, despite a quantity being reported in a sequential operation. We have tried in pilot to create a job and have an operation change the production standard format from minutes/piece to Fixed hours and the quantity does not get backflushed, yet we have an operation still with minutes/piece and the quantity DOES get backflushed. The only difference is the change in the production standard format.
Please let me know if you need more information, we are using Kinetic version 2024.2.10.
How would a Fixed Time and then using a Labor Collection Method of Time - Backflush Qty work together? As I recall, you can’t report a quantity on these. It determines how many you made based on the time you reported. If your time is Fixed, how would you be able to calculate any quantity?
I think you have selected to use two things that should be mutually exclusive of each other.
Edit: Wouldn’t you really want it to be Q for Quantity Only? You report your quantity and then the entirety of the Fixed time is backflushed?
Second Edit: I was off a bit. For the Time - Backflushed Quantity to work, you need at least one operation afterwards that reports a quantity.
I think it would help for me to describe a little bit more in depth what we hope to accomplish with this change, so that you or someone else can hopefully offer an alternative solution that would help us accomplish our goal, and/or to clear up misunderstandings we have with Labor Entry types.
We had hoped to use Fixed Time the same way that we use a production standard; as a benchmark to predict costing as well as to compare the recorded or actual times for jobs against the predicted value. The reason why we wanted to use Fixed Time as opposed to a production standard, or setup hours, is because we want to allocate a set amount of time, per job, for quality checking, for one each at the start of each job. If we tried to do this in a production standard, the standard would be multiplied by the number of parts we have for that job, this may be an error in setup of our parts on our end, but hopefully it will not prevent us from what we want to accomplish. Setup hours would not work either, because if we have multiple jobs of the same part being done in order, we still need to perform a quality check on the first part for each job, and setup time would only account for the setup for the first job, unless I am misunderstanding how Epicor records this value as well.
In the example table you have attached, what we have observed is that when we have an operation (in this example Op. 20) that is Time - Backflush Qty as the labor entry, as well as has a Fixed Time value, the operation will not be marked as complete even if a quantity is reported in Op.30. However, it will be marked as completed if the Fixed time is removed, and the operation has a production standard, and setup time associated with it.
Sorry for the long response, I hope the added details and explanation makes our issue more clear and not more complicated. Please let me know if you have any questions about anything I have said here.
Well, that sure sounds like setup time to me. Is this time pretty variable or does it come down to a fairly static value per part? Is there a $/hour rate associated with your setup costs? I suppose your costing method probably makes a difference as well.
From a Data Collection standpoint, your Setup Time and Production Time are entered separately just as they are separate numbers in your Method/Job. So, you can have 1 hour of setup, and then the production standard can still be 15 minutes per piece.
If you run 3 jobs of the same kind consecutively, one could argue that the lack of setup on jobs 2 and 3 is favorable manufacturing variance at that point.
I assume you are make to order? Otherwise, you could aggregate the three jobs into a single one and avoid the costing problem.
Is this time pretty variable or does it come down to a fairly static value per part?
It is fairly static per part
Is there a $/hour rate associated with your setup costs?
Yes
If you run 3 jobs of the same kind consecutively, one could argue that the lack of setup on jobs 2 and 3 is favorable manufacturing variance at that point.
This would be cheaper, however would not accurately reflect our production process. If we were to run 5 jobs for the same part consecutively, we would need to allocate 20 minutes per job for what we are hoping to have as fixed time. If we have this 20 minutes as setup time, we are not going to be accounting for the 20 minutes for the other 4 jobs. And if we have this 20 minutes as a production standard, we will be accounting for potentially a lot more time than the workers truly spend quality checking one of the parts.
Alright, then you could do a Start Setup Activity/End Activity for each of those 5 jobs PRIOR to Start Production Activity/End Activity on each job.
The Setup Time would be 20 minutes and your Production Standard whatever your standard rate is. Granted in this scenario, the 20 minutes isn’t fixed and would vary from one job to the next most likely.
I suppose you could create a separate operation for just the setup time of 20 minutes, and set the Labor Collection Method of that Operation to Backflushed. Then when you complete the subsequent Production Operation, it will backflush exactly 20 minutes of setup every time. Pseudo fixed setup time? In theory that might get you want you want.
Op 10 Setup - Setup Hours: .33 Production Std: 0 Backflushed
Op 20 Production - Setup Hours: 0 Production Std: x pieces per hour Time and Quantity
Completing a quantity on Op 20, backflushes Op 10.
I suppose you could create a separate operation for just the setup time of 20 minutes, and set the Labor Collection Method of that Operation to Backflushed. Then when you complete the subsequent Production Operation, it will backflush exactly 20 minutes of setup every time.
If we were doing multiple jobs of the same part in sequence, each job would have 20 minutes allocated to it with this method? Not only the first job?
