PO suggestions Real world HELP - Parts continue to pop up even though they are ordered

Epicor ERP 10
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1

I am getting very frustrated with PO suggestions. They should make life way easier, and it seems so basic, but they do not work right. I need some real world help on why my problem keeps happening or maybe different settings I need to make them work better.

Basically, I will get a suggestion, that I almost agree with. But it will split up a part into 2 releases. Some of those part simply do not make sense to split up because they are freight shipped and should be shipped together. So I Order from suggestion, but manually combine the releases. and tomorrow, we will see the same suggestion except with only one of the release qtys.
Example: we have a freight shipped item, that showed us a suggestion for 17 units, 1 on 1 release, and 16 on another. During the suggestion review process, our purchaser removed the release of 1 and added to the release of 16, so it would order 17 units on the same (and earlist due) release.

Now, that part continues to come up on the suggestion list for 16 units. I cannot get rid of it.

Consultants have said it is due to due dates which we have adjusted multiple times to try and fix, and it has not worked.

This part does not have a min max, has a days of supply of 20, has a lead time of 45 days and is not buy direct. But all of that in my mind shouldn’t matter. 17 of them are on order, set to be in before the due date. Why is it even on the suggestion list?

I guess I don’t understand why the system doesn’t understand that there are enough of this part on order, due to be here in time, and to stop giving me suggestions on it. I kind of want it to stop giving me releases even, and just order the part on the same release. I also almost do not care about change po suggestions which might be in play.

This is the time phase report for my part:

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image1648Ă—480 23.8 KB

any suggestions from other buyers out there to make this work better?

2

The change suggestion is what’s causing you grief in your time phase example. The suggestion engine expects you to honor all suggestions. So in this case you should be reducing your original PO and then create a new PO for 12 to come in JIT for your next job.

A lot of time companies either ignore change suggestions or real world scenarios don’t allow them to just make constant revisions to their suppliers.

FIX:
On the PO Release tab select Lock Qty and Lock Date. This tells the suggestion engine that this po release can’t be modified and prevents change suggestions from being created for that release. Both of the suggestions listed should go away after this.

*A lot of companies make the selection of the two lock boxes standard procedure, or better yet, create a BPM that automatically selects them on new releases.

*I usually recommend this excluding buy direct items from this practice since change suggestions might be more important on these parts.

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Awesome. Thankyou for your quick reply. My initial test on this problem part worked.

would you recommend using any time fences? would that also almost do what I am looking to do?

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I don’t think time fences will have much effect on po suggestions. I think those are reserved for operation/resource scheduling.

Days of supply is typically your best tool for combining suggestions. In this example 20 days wasn’t a big enough to combine the last demand record with the first two.

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5

Lock the PO quantity, allow the system to just change dates.

If the inventory spirals out of control (either high or low), unlock the PO quantities and replan the part.

6

The reschedule out and in Time delta will effect po suggestions. Below is from epicor help.

Reschedule In Time Delta
Only for Purchase Orders
This prevents a change suggestion from being created for a PO line that would move up the PO due date for this many days. Example, if the PO line Due Date is the 10th and this In Delta is 5 days. When Generate Suggestions is run, a change suggestion cannot be created to move this Due Date up to any time between the 5th and the 10th.
But it can still create a change suggestion for the 4th and before.
Calculates using Regular Straight Calendar Days, 24x7. Does not calculate using any related production Calendar.

Reschedule Out Time Delta
Only for Purchase Orders
This prevents a change suggestion from being created for a PO line that would move out the PO due date for this many days. Example, if the PO line Due Date is the 10th and this Out Delta is 5 days. When Generate Suggestions is run, a change suggestion cannot be created to move this Due Date out to any time between the 10th and the 15th.
But it can still create a change suggestion for the 16th and after.
Calculates using Regular Straight Calendar Days, 24x7. Does not calculate using any related production Calendar. "

7

Your days of supply are set to 20 for this part. Try expanding your days of supply. Also, try locking your date and your quantity on the release.

1 Like
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+1 @Beth
I agree with Beth, the actual root cause of your double suggestion is your Days of Supply is too short for what you describe you want to do. By default Epicor wants to work in a JIT mode:
First Demand point: 02/11
Scan out 20 more days (til 03/03),
No additional demand found, create Suggestion.
Next Demand point: 03/26 (43 days later).
You should either increase your Days of Supply on this part to how you actually would like to plan, say 50 days, (which would probably fit better with your Lead Time).
Or if the Order Qty is a better option than how often you need to order, then set your Min Order Qty for the part. If you can easily stock 40 or 50 units, then set your Min Order Qty to the minimum number of units you can accept to stock.
Doing either or both of these will address your issue.
Planning Time Fence should prevent additional suggestions, but the real issue is that your Planning Parameters don’t seem to agree with how you are attempting to stock the part.

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9

This looks normal, actually. If you want the suggestion to reduce quantity to go away, just lock the PO quantity.

The reason for the buying suggestion is that - if you honor the suggestion to reduce your inventory to your minimum on hand (currently zero), you will have to order more to cover future demand.

Extending days of supply will do a similar thing, providing the days of supply looks out far enough to cover the 12 piece demand you have on the last line in Time Phase.

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Thanks all. I think between all of you, we have this resolved. The Root cause is not days of supply exactly, I understand what that is doing. The root cause is rescheduling jobs after pos are written, which is causing the change po suggestions. The best statement is " The suggestion engine expects you to honor all suggestions." which we don’t.

It is wanting that JIT delivery and tries everything it can to do it. Honestly, until yesterday I didn’t know there was a Change Po workbench.
Locking the dates and QTYs was the ticket. at least for now. we have a ton of long lead time parts, many custom ordered, where we do not have the option to change the po after it is written with our vendors anyway.

I think the time deltas can really help too if we do not want to lock the part quantities. Right now we are globally rescheduling almost weekly to try and get our scheduling worked out more appropriately (we went live january 1) and i think that has caused most of our issues.

I appreciate all your help, Now we will see if I can put the hair back in that I pulled out…