Due to the current economic client, we are having to pre-order some significant parts well in advance of when we normally would. Usually, we release a Bill of Material for an entire system, which would include the purchased part and this would trigger to purchase the part and it would arrive in time - not the case these days. Now, we are buying the purchased parts before the BOM is released in hopes we receive it on time. We have been purchasing these to inventory, but the concern is we will miss ordering them for a different order if they show in inventory for a new order. A couple ideas we have are below, but looking for input.
Receive these parts to inventory, but “move” them to a new “bin location” that we would recognize to be not available for other SOs. Unsure how this would work for Purchase Suggestions. Would the bin need to be non-nettable?
Remove these parts from the main BOM when released, and include them as Buy Direct line items on the SO. This may be a big negative for our expediting team when they pull parts for the main BoM, though.
Have you looked into the Planning Contracts functionality? Seems tailor-made for this. From Epicor’s datasheet:
“There are instances where parts need to be manufactured or purchased to satisfy a future requirement for a product or job that has yet to be fully developed from an engineering standpoint or there are long lead items that need to be purchased or built before the upper level orders are ready to be released.”
@jgreenaway do you know where one might find a video example on how this works? I don’t see anything in Epicor Learning Center and am struggling to find a good step-by-step example that isn’t 5+ years old.
@lfilzen - I don’t know of a video example but would be happy to chat about it. Spent some “quality time” with it on a recent client project. It’s pretty straight forward.