Resource Group Output Warehouse & Bin

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

I’m having a hard time understanding the point of the Resource Output Warehouse and Bin designations.

I was led to believe by implementation consultants that Time and Expense entries against a Job Operation that links to this Resource (and further, for a Job whose Demand Link pointed to this warehouse) the auto received inventory would increase at this location.

I’m finding, however, that the Output Warehouse/Bin on the Resource Group isn’t factored in the heirarchy at all. The only place it ever increments inventory upon Time and Expense Entries, is the Default Bin in the Demand Link Warehouse.

For example, I have my Resource Set up with an Output Warehouse & Bin (00000000) as such:

In the Job Record, I pointed the Demand Link to the same Warehouse:

However, when I do a Time and Expense Entry against this Job:

The Part Transaction History Tracker shows it went to the right warehouse, but a different Bin:

The bin that was incremented (Customer Service) was the Primary Bin in the Warehouse called by the Demand Link:

Does anyone know exactly what the Resource Output Warehouse and Bin is used for, if not for what I was expecting it to be?

Or any thoughts on customizations I could build to reroute inventory to the bin called out on the Resource?

[hmwillett (Hannah Willett)]

I noticed that you don’t have “Auto Move” selected in the resource group. The transaction is probably creating a material queue to the default bin and waiting for you to process the material queue to put it away.
If you select auto move, it should do that for you to that bin.

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

Good eye. It was checked originally, I was testing and toggled it off to see if I got the same results. I ALMOST went back and updated the screenshot after I realized it was still unchecked–because of the incredible attention to detail by the users on this board… You definitely passed that one. But alas, the state of the checkbox had no bearing on the destination.

[hmwillett (Hannah Willett)]

Do you have the same configuration at the resource level?

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

Currently, it’s set at both the Resource Group and the Resource. Originally, I just tried the Resource Group, then I moved to the Resource as I tested each configuration change.

[hmwillett (Hannah Willett)]

The more I’m reading into it, the more it sounds like those are only relevant to the move queue and not auto receipt.
You may have to go the customization route. I’ll defer to the programmers that are better than I am for this one.

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

I’m afraid that’s the conclusion I was leaning toward. Thanks for giving me a second set of eyes, I really appreciate your time!

[BoostERP (Brad Boes)]

I think it matters if you have AMM or not as well.

These are the WIP locations for the job.

The Primary Bin still comes into play for the job receipt to inventory.

Brad Boes
bradboes@boosterpconsulting.com
231-845-1090

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

Yeah we have AMM. One of the onboarding Epicor consultants led us to believe (not maliciously, just kind of ignorantly) that this bin would be used the way I described above. This really wouldn’t be the first time lack of consultant knowledge plagued us. I figured I’d come here and see if I could confirm my suspicion that it doesn’t, in fact, work this way.

The most unfortunate part is that I built a fairly robust external system that allows our production team to scan PLC counter readings against jobs that I query from the Epicor database through PHP/HTML, and it automatically bulk imports our Time and Expense Entry Labor Quantities each day. After we rolled this out, it was eventually discovered that inventories weren’t increasing in the Resource bins as we expected.

I initially thought to build a customization at the Time and Expense Entry to query the Resource Warehouse and Bin and inject it into the data stream, but I’m not exposed to any Business Processes (at least through the trace) that contains any warehouse or bin locations, so I’m guessing it’s triggering multiple separate Business Processes, and finding the right one feels a bit like a needle in a haystack.

[hmwillett (Hannah Willett)]

Lee,

See if you’re able to set a pre-processing method directive on the ReceiptsFromMfg BO on either PreUpdate or ReceiveMfgPartToInventory.
See if you can set the bin in one of those to the one that’s defined in the resource group (may require some custom code).
It wouldn’t be in T&E since that’s got nothing to do with receiving. You’ve got the auto receipt to inventory on, so that leads me to believe that the ReceiptsFromMfg is being called automatically from that.

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

Brilliant! I think you may have just narrowed the haystack down substantially. That sounds like the perfect BO to start with. I’ll start playing around with it in my Test environment early next week and see if I can get a desired result. Thanks for the idea, I’ll report back when I’ve given it a try. Thanks again for your time!

[jkane (John Kane)]

The output warehouse and bin is only for WIP. It does not affect receiving into stock at the end of the job.

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

Yes, I believe you are right. What I’m attempting now, is capturing the proper method to be able to divert Received Inventory triggered from a Time and Expense entry into the Warehouse and Bin defined on the Resource. So far, no luck getting exposure to the right business process from the scope of a Time and Expense Entry, unfortunately, but I’m not quite ready to give up.

[jkane (John Kane)]

Can you define it at the Part level and just have the primary bin for the part be where you want it to go?

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

We may ultimately have to go that route, but we have Parts that run on multiple Resources within a Resource Group, and depending on the Resources, the final destination of the part will be a different location.

The downside with this is that we will then have to manage a Primary Bin in a Non Primary Warehouse for each Part (not a big deal), but more importantly, the scheduler/job creator needs to make sure to point the Demand Link Warehouse to the proper Warehouse based on what will ultimately hinge on which Resource is chosen for this run–and that information isn’t always available at Demand Link creation.

Other options I’m considering are:
*Having the external system I built, which takes production counts scanned in by employees, and after it dynamically DMTs in all of the Time and Expense entries, turn around and immediately do a dynamic DMT to transfer the inventory from the designated Primary Bin in the Demand Link Warehouse to the desired location.

-The downside here is it’s a custom external system written entirely by me, and if something happens to me, it only works until it breaks, then it’s no good forever. Also, I’m not extremely keen on creating all of those extra Part Transactions in the History, so this would be a last ditch emergency solution just to get our inventory pumping into the correct locations.

I have a couple other ideas that revolve around a BPM for when Demand Links are created, to at least default to the Warehouse called out on the Resource–BUT that requires the Resource to be present on the Job record at the time the Demand Link is created (again, which isn’t always known at the time of job creation), and I could at least get it right SOME of the time through some if/then logic, but ultimately how MRP is going to be affected worries me here.

It would all be (potentially) solved if I could just find and tap into the Business Object that is responsible for creating the Inventory Transaction after Time and Expense Entry is triggered and hijack the destination at the moment the system defines it.

I know that it won’t be as easy as that, because it never is, but the programmer in me would at least like to find the right object and method to take a stab to see exactly how far I can run with it. Thanks for the input! Any and all other thoughts are more than welcome!

[LeeB (Lee Burns)]

Update: I’m now able to do what I originally set out to do–Route Job Receipts to the Output Bins defined on the Resource/Resource Group). The problem was that I was mentally locked into Time and Expense Entry as the way to report counts against a job. I never questioned it because that was what the Epicor Consultant said to do all through implementation.

However, when I took a step back and started asking why we were using T&E Entry and not Job Receipt to Inventory, we couldn’t come up with any reasonable answer other than “we were told to.” Upon examining the Methods for Job Receipt to Inventory, I found exactly what I was looking for in the Erp.ReceiptsFromMfg.GetNewReceiptsFromMfgJobAsm method as well as the Erp.ReceiptsFromMfg.ReceiveMfgPartToInventory method, as directed to by willetta, without whom I probably wouldn’t have thought to look here (so thanks again!).

An easy custom C# BPM on these methods evaluates whether the Job being reported has a Resource Group or Resource, then whether that Resource Group or Resource has an Output Bin, then uses some if/then logic to assign the Inventory destination based on our desires. After I test thoroughly and clear any costing concerns with Accounting, all that’s left is to tweak the output on my current Counter Reporting website and have it dynamically process Job Receipt To Inventory instead of T&E Entry.

Thanks so much for your help!