Resource Capabilities

ERP 10
#1

Hi All,

I’m new to this software and just starting to get familiar with Epicor Scheduling. Please bear with me as I try to get to all your levels! We just went live in Epicor in May of 2020. Mainly working from the technical guides.

Currently setting up the system with the basics and going to go from there. Right now I’m having issues with resource groups. Many of our resources within the resource groups are capable of working multiple resource groups. It’s been conflicting my schedule and not sure the best way to approach it. I was thinking that I could either add capabilities to the operations or the resource? I think it makes more sense to make the resource capable of multiple resource groups and then set priorities on the groups? What’s the best way to do that? I apologize if I’m missing anything or this is too basic!! The capability maintenance screen is throwing me off some and may not be in the right place.

#2

Welcome. My response is going to assume that you have cells and that is why you have resources that could perform operations for other resource groups.

Excuse me if my answer is not exact as my current role does not have the advanced scheduling.

You want to create the capabilities and tie the resources that can meet that capability to it and what operation it is that will be performed.

Then, when the MOM is being built, the engineer should be adding the capabilities to it instead of the operation. Dragging in the capability will add the operation and the default resource. When you run scheduling, if there are conflicts, the engine will see if there are other resources with the same capability and look for open time on them.

As an example. Let’s say you have 3 brakes. A 1 foot, 2 foot, and 3 foot. I would create capabilities: bend1, bend2, and bend3. Bend1 would have the operation bend assigned to it and all 3 brakes as possible resources with the 1 foot brake the primary. Bend 2 would have the operation bend assigned to it and the 2 & 3 foot brakes with the 2 foot as the primary. Bend 3 would have the bend operation with only the 3 foot as a resource.

It’s been a while since I used capabilities so take what I say with a grain of salt as I may be forgetting something. In my opinion, capabilities are hard to grasp at first. At least that was my experience.

#3

We’ve embraced capabilities here, and I’ve been pleased with the results so far.

They are “interesting” to set up, but they do allow you to offload operations from overloaded equipment to any other equipment you want - regardless if it is in a different resource group.

Remember when using them - you only want the capability to be listed on the operation. The hierarchy is reversed, operations will schedule on the specified resource, if no resource is listed they will schedule on the resource group, if no resource group is listed, they will schedule on the capability you created.

Also, the way you add resources into a capability will control the sequence that Epicor uses to find open equipment. The “highest” numbered resource will be the one selected first. Definitely not intuitive, but it does work as advertised.

#4

Thank you both for your responses! I’m not familiar with the term cells but you both have started me on the right track still. I’ve created a capability that is tied to an operation. I’ve put resources from other resource groups within the capability. I’m now scheduling a job and at the operation that I have tied the capability to. When I go to the scheduling resources detail tab, I’ve added the capability. When I go to schedule specific resources, it only shows the ones within the resource group that the operation is tied to and not showing any of the others from other resource groups.

One of my issues that I’m having is that we have many resource groups, but limited on resources. Our resources are capable of many operations outside of their resource group which makes it harder to schedule future jobs while keeping what’s current accurate. Is there a way to set up capabilities so that I don’t have to have an active resource in the resource group, but still have someone within production that is capable?

Hopefully I’m on the right track. Thanks again!