OPINIONS WANTED: New PO Suggestions vs Change PO Suggestions?

Kinetic ERP
5

Yo you can lock quantities and/or dates on PO releases to prevent change suggestions.

  1. No
  2. No
  3. No
  4. I would like that
  5. Don’t care
6

so your buyers dont use the suggestions? why not? Does that mean that they manually create every PO instead of letting the system create the po via a checkbox on the New PO Suggestions? that sounds inefficient.

7

no

I’m trying. Lots of groundwork to have the suggestions be useable. Pesky things like accurate inventory and BOMs getting in the way. We’re finally getting there.

Yup

yup!

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8

Ditto @andrew.johnson again, We lock ALL PO Lines to force new suggestions only.

9

I see a pattern emerging…

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10

Personally if I were a buyer, I would never use PO suggestions of any kind.

I’m not saying no one should, I’m just in the same boat as @hackaphreaka. It’s a never-ending battle trying to get a million settings right.

We developed a BAQ/dashboard/Excel sheet that summarizes millions of PartDtl rows into a single report. I love this thing.

I’ve revised it since this, but it looks like this:

Edit: Here it is today (well, Monday):

image
image1920×1058 197 KB

They asked me to add a column for average weekly usage and then turn cells blue if we have more than X times that on hand at any given time.

We apparently always have too much inventory… Thanks, covid.

11

The Buyers workbench can be awesome and fast, but you have to manage it. We place a lot of POs a day, so you need to be quick and the workbench is faster than entering. I use it to split rated and non rated buys and push all of our flowdowns to vendors.

12

We don’t use either of those screens, we make all PO’s by hand. We don’t have many PO’s per day.

13

As a consultant my answers represent about 6 of my clients

  1. Yes
  2. Some
  3. No
  4. It would probably help to ensure that nothing is missed in change suggestions. But wouldn’t this be similar to the Buyer Workbench? In some ways it would help, since sometimes when a buyer didn’t see a suggestion and I ask if they checked Change Suggestions, the response is ‘what’s that?’
  5. No strong opinion on the menu item name.

For most of my clients most of their suppliers do not wish or do not accept PO Changes and would rather just have a new PO issued. Since this is the case, I have setup a BPM that locks all the Releases on a PO when the PO is approved (basically set the Lock fields to equal the Approve field) and this mostly keeps Change Suggestions from happening.
I have yet to hear from any buyer (in over 10 yrs) that desires the change PO Suggestions functionality.

Most planners I speak with feel the same way about Job suggestion changes, so we have a BPM there to lock the Job Qty when released.

For most of these folks handing and processing new demand takes up most of their day so adding changes just seems to complicate and confuse them.
I kinda wish there was a Site Config to enable or disable PO or Job Change Suggestions, it would make aligning with the business fuctions a lot easier.

4 Likes
14

@Rick_Bird But wouldn’t this be similar to the Buyer Workbench?
Well… yes, in some ways, it does emulate some of what the Buyer Workbench could do…

BUT, we are also beefing up Buyer Workbench too. In the current buyer workbench, it will show you items to buy or change, but when you look there, you have to click and it takes you to the NEW PO or CHANGE PO screen.
In the future Buyer workbench (Insert safe harbor statement here), we also are embedding the NEWPO and CHANGEPO screens directly inside the buyer workbench so there is no need to go to another screen.
(See the things we can do now that we are in Kinetic UI?)

1 Like
15

Getting all of the things that need to be in place to have Epicor produce consistently accurate and reliable PO suggestions, to the point where people trust these suggestions enough to spend real money and make business decisions on them, and have the right quantity of the right part show up at the right time, all the time, is a commendable achievement.

2 Likes
16

Good Morning,

Thanks for asking the group Tim!

  1. Yes
  2. No. Thinking on why, I guess it is because we are unable to keep up with good maintenance of job dates and we don’t work so well with SS requiring immediate replenishment.
  3. No
  4. I think it would be a problem. We already have some issues with getting new PO suggestions processed as needed by correct personnel and I think having change suggestions in there too would make it even more difficult.
  5. I sorta hope you don’t combine them due to 4 above, so if you end up combining I don’t care what it’s called, it won’t be preferable.

Nancy

1 Like
17

STORY TIME:
I once had a customer engagement where i was told to discuss with their Buyer why they could not use the suggestions. This buyer was a real challenge. She told me that she was spending 10-12 hours per day looking through suggestions, and they were ALL WRONG. She had to MANUALLY add up the suggestions, and MANUALLY enter POs because the suggestions were all wrong. “the system doesnt make good suggestions”…
When i asked for examples, the first one she showed me was a BOLT. The system was generating 1000s of suggestions to purchase this part… some were qty’s of 5, 10, 3, 1, 100, etc. Many on the same date. Her comment was “This doesn’t make sense… we buy these in boxes of 5000”.
My answer: “Well… you can go into the part, and tell it that the Order Multiple is 5000. and next time, the suggestion will be to buy 5000. It will automatically group all the suggestions, so you can simply check the box to buy”.
Her answer: “I dont have time for that. I need to get these bolts purchased now”.

My unkind (but unspoken thought): "Well, then I don’t have time to spend with you to help."

I suggested to her manager that she take a pause for 1 day, and instead of slowly/manually creating POs, that she spend the day adjusting the Order Multiples for all the fasteners she was purchasing, and also loading Min buy, and proper lead times. Then after running MRP, the next day she will have good suggestions.
ALSO… I think I might have seen her REAL problem: She was paid overtime and what I was suggesting would make it easier for her to get her job done without overtime. This suggestion affected her paycheck.
End of Story Time

2 Likes
18

This is fantastic! Would you be able to share the latest version?

19

Please add your comments:

1. Does your purchasing department use New PO Suggestions
Yes
2. Does your purchasing department use Change PO Suggestions
I haven’t been anywhere yet that uses Change PO suggestions. Once the PO’s get made they usually get sent, and a change would be a pain.

3. Do you have any security differences between these two apps?
Not really applicable, since no one uses the change suggestions.

4. If these apps were to be combined into one all called “PO Suggestions” how would that positively or negatively affect your world? (ie… do you see rainbows and butterflies, you are ambivalent, or this idea would enrage you).

I think that them being in separate screens is super confusing to the users. When a Change PO suggestion comes up instead of a new PO suggestion, if they know that they should be seeing a PO suggestions, then they end up calling IT because they can’t figure out why they aren’t seeing them. They need to be clearly delineated somehow, because they are very different things, but they should somehow show up together.

5. If we do combine these, would changing the menu option’s name cause you grief or happiness?
I think combining it is better. The same people making the PO’s would be changing them.

One ask I would have is a better way to control change vs. new PO suggestions. This could be per part, per supplier. Something like a disallow change suggestions, and if either the part, or the supplier has them it wouldn’t make the change suggestions. Also, a site level global-ish setting to allow or disallow Change PO settings. I think that would help a lot of people.

1 Like
20
  1. Yes
  2. No
  3. No
  4. Since we do not acted on change suggestions it woud be more difficult to filter between the 2 unless they are on separate tabs.
  5. No
21

Hi

Please do not merge them. This creates too many items to check. The customers prefers to have them separately.

Thanks

22

@matt.whitman1 Here you go - I did a formal write-up:

https://www.epiusers.help/t/the-stoplight-report-a-summary-of-time-phase-for-all-parts/101977

And welcome to the group!

1 Like
23
  1. Yes
  2. Yes
  3. No
  4. I would like to see your thoughts at the next WI EUG Meeting. As a buyer using this every day, I’m used to having the two suggestions separate. I think it could also get confusing if I locked date and/or quantity if all suggestions are being viewed at the same time in the same screen. I use the lock boxes quite frequently for multiple reasons and when I do lock them down, I fully expect to see these suggestions go away in Change PO Suggestions in the case of a postpone suggestion or move over to New PO Suggestions in the case of an expedite suggestion. To answer your question Tim, I could see this enraging me if not done right.
  5. If these two suggestions were to be combined, the name to me is not an issue.
24

  1. Yes

  2. Yes

  3. No

  4. Too much clutter combined, and we use the changes to quickly send out suppliers, would require more filtering to clean out new buy suggestions

  5. No opinion