Good morning!
We are still working towards scheduling in Epicor. Now that we have APS, we can have more than two resource groups assigned to a single operation. We intend to use this by setting up all of our operations to pull in a machine capability, and a labor capability that matches that machine.
For example:
User logs in to job 12345, asm 0, op 130. This op requires the vertical milling machine capability (C4A), and a vertical milling operator capability (L4A). After scheduling the job, Epicor chooses a resource to fill in C4A and L4A. For the machine capability, it might pull in machine #5, and for the labor, it might pull in L15.
My main question is, when the user is at MES and logging into a job/op, do they have to specify both the machine and labor resource they are using? Will Epicor pull in both resources automatically as long as the scheduling engine has scheduled some resources?
I just tried to simulate this. I setup a job’s operation to have the two resource groups C4A and L4A. After I schedule the job, I can see it assigned resource 15, and L10 for those groups.
However, when I log in to that operation with MES, it only shows the one resource (15) being utilized, and not the L10 resource. Did I do something wrong in this setup?
Are you using Resource Groups or Capabilities? If you are using Capabilities, those should be called out on the scheduled resources and not Resource Groups.
Yes I am using capabilities in my operations. The scheduling resources do call out the capabilities, but after I schedule the job, you can see in the scheduled resources the actual machine and labor resource that was chosen by the scheduling engine.
The capabilities contain the resource groups and the individual resources.
I just checked and my LB resource group was set to location, so I turned it off. I know my 4A RG is setup as a location.
I still don’t see any labor resource referenced in MES, T&E entry, or job tracker.
OK The JSB does show the labor resource. But how does that labor get applied to the job if the user doesn’t choose the labor resource at MES? It seems like the user has to sign into op 130 twice. Once using the machine resource, and again using the labor resource. That can’t be right, right?
The employee signing in is what applies them to the job. Are your users set up as generic resources or are the resources created from the Employee record? I forgot that when you log into a job, you are only using the primary resource to log in against. All of the other resources get scheduled, you just do not sign into them.
Our users are generic resources. We didn’t setup specific resources from employee records. We just know that there are 5 guys that can run 4A, so we put in 5 LB resources that have the L4A capability.
YES! Always put the labor and burden on the machine resources, never on the employees. The labor rates on the resources are for quoting and costing and when an employee logs into a job the actual should be getting calculated based on their rate on their employee record.