I will start very broadly and hopefully we can drill down into the issue I want to solve.
We schedule infinitely. We run MRP. We are make to order. Typically, we’d enter a ship by date and the job would also show due the same date.
We have a truck upfitting business that installs our equipment on trucks. We need the equipment job to be due a couple weeks in front of the ship by date because it needs to be completed before we can do the truck installation. We also sell this same equipment to other distribution and upfitters and in those cases, completing the job the same week as the ship by is the correct timing.
The issue I need help with
Is there a way to schedule a job to be due a user-defined number of days before the ship by date of the demand link? I know you can schedule the job but if you don’t firm it, MRP deletes it. We run MRP each night. We don’t want to firm something months in advance. But we do want visibility of what’s promised/scheduled in those weeks as we look to evaluate capacity. It’s like, the time on the resources is firm but the materials are not… And realistically, we are driving materials as well so those need to be driven to the two weeks earlier due date. I know there are planning settings that can back a job up but those apply at the part/site level and in our case we have the same part in the same site where the job will sometimes need to be due with the order and other times will need to be due a couple weeks before the order.
Any ideas? I hope I’m overlooking something simple and you guys straighten me out
The only out of the box thing that comes to mind that might work is leveraging the delivery days setting at the Customer and/or Ship To level. This backs up the ship by from the need by based on a value you assign.
Not sure if this is at all viable for your setup but it’s the first thing I thought of.
In the back of my mind, I’m thinking we might just live with the 2 weeks difference until it gets closer. Then maybe 6 weeks out we can firm it up and schedule the job 2 weeks earlier than the ship by date.
They are… but they are not the same line on an order. The equipment is one line (with no truck installation requirement attached to it) and the truck installation is a separate line with a separate job that only has time and materials required to do the installation… not the equipment itself.
If I’m reading your question right, I think the field you want is the Receive time on the part. This will make the job to make the part on the sales order start earlier than the run time of the job.
Example: if the sales order ship by is 3/8 and you have a 1 day method of manufacturing and a 7 day receive time on the part (ignoring production calendars) you would get a job to start on 3/1.
Why not just enter the Ship By date as two weeks earlier on these orders? If you “know” that line 1 needs to be done 2 weeks earlier because you need it for line 2, just back off 2 weeks on the ship by date on line 1.
