Seeking Ideas: Phasing In New Part Numbers

Yahoo Archive
1
Use MRP to help manage the change.
Two different approaches -
A) Place ABC2 on the Sales Kit
Place ABC1 as the only component on the BOM for ABC2, make it effective now.
When MRP runs, a job will be recommended for ABC2, your planner can look at
the inventory position of ABC1 and when it runs out, place the real BOM
under ABC2

B) Leave ABC1 on the sales kits.
Place ABC2 as the only component on the BOM for ABC1, make it effective now.
When MRP runs a new job will be recommended for ABC1 (if you don't have
inventory) and ABC2 will also have a demand.
After the inventory runs out, go into the Sales kits and replace ABC1 with
ABC2.

Bruce
bruce@...
www.ERPgeek.com



-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
pbriscoe10
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 10:09 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Seeking Ideas: Phasing In New Part Numbers

Hello,

We would like to phase in new part numbers and are thinking of the best way
of going about it.

We build kits. The components of these kits will be undergoing some changes
that require us to change their part numbers. What we would like to do is
slowly phase in the new part numbers whenever inventory for the current part
number is depleted. For example, when kit component ABC1 has its inventory
depleted, we would like Vantage to automatically switch over to the new part
number ABC2.

Our Concept:

We are trying to find a way for the system (MRP) to recognize when ABC1 runs
out of stock and then switch over and start making ABC2 to replace ABC1. We
thought that by selecting the "Run Out" option and deselecting "Run MRP" on
Part Maintenance of ABC1 we would stop MRP from suggesting new jobs for it;
it did. We also thought that by adding ABC2 as a substitute part to ABC1, we
could have MRP start creating jobs for ABC2 once ABC1 was depleted and had
the "Run Out" option selected; it did not.

Idealy, we would like to see MRP suggest a job to create ABC2 and use it to
fulfill the demand for ABC1. However; it seems that this is not how the
relationship works. If anyone has any suggestions as to how we could go
about phasing in our new part numbers (which must be done) while still being
able to use up the stock of our old part numbers, we would love to hear
them.

Note: The option of moving our quantities over from the old part numbers to
the new ones and then rebuilding our kits won't really work since we won't
know right away what the new part numbers are going to be (customer
dependent).

Thank you.



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2
Hello,

We would like to phase in new part numbers and are thinking of the best way of going about it.

We build kits. The components of these kits will be undergoing some changes that require us to change their part numbers. What we would like to do is slowly phase in the new part numbers whenever inventory for the current part number is depleted. For example, when kit component ABC1 has its inventory depleted, we would like Vantage to automatically switch over to the new part number ABC2.

Our Concept:

We are trying to find a way for the system (MRP) to recognize when ABC1 runs out of stock and then switch over and start making ABC2 to replace ABC1. We thought that by selecting the "Run Out" option and deselecting "Run MRP" on Part Maintenance of ABC1 we would stop MRP from suggesting new jobs for it; it did. We also thought that by adding ABC2 as a substitute part to ABC1, we could have MRP start creating jobs for ABC2 once ABC1 was depleted and had the "Run Out" option selected; it did not.

Idealy, we would like to see MRP suggest a job to create ABC2 and use it to fulfill the demand for ABC1. However; it seems that this is not how the relationship works. If anyone has any suggestions as to how we could go about phasing in our new part numbers (which must be done) while still being able to use up the stock of our old part numbers, we would love to hear them.

Note: The option of moving our quantities over from the old part numbers to the new ones and then rebuilding our kits won't really work since we won't know right away what the new part numbers are going to be (customer dependent).

Thank you.
3
If I remember right, Run out is a PARTREV run out (and switch to new rev). It's been a year+ since I looked at it though (during piloting) so my memory could be faulty.

Pretty sure MRP needs to be on for this to work.

Run Out and Substitution (of a completely different part) aren't really related to each other at all (other than both need MRP on for the parts involved).

I seem to recall substitution worked OK for order entry's ATP function but there were issues (bugs) when it came to actually getting a job created with the substitution when using the order job wizard (make-drect, non-stock part jobs).

That may have been the versions we were on at the time during piloting (305 thru 404) and perhaps it's been resolved on later versions.

Never bothered to retest during our 1st year+ live as ineither (right now) is a particularly useful feature to us. In our business, it is rare for a single part to be replaced one to one with a new part. (Part-rev's are a different story - but we have a very tight, efficient human process for proactively handling that.)

We've focussed on automating the humdrum/repetitive processes during this 1st year+ and phase in/out (in our business) is not simple and humdrum. Because we're assemble to order (millions of combinations of options), it is nearly impossible to (for us) to end up with perfectly matched sets of parts that run out simultaneously.

We put skilled planners on these kinds of planned changes (unless they are critical DO NOW changes because of some uncovered quality/design issue). The planners then routinely monitor the parts involved and try to nudge them as close to match sets as possible during the 'use up' period while they are randomly being consumed in our ATO highly configurable end products. The goal is to enact the changes as quickly as possible but to also minimize any remaining unmatched sets of parts that we'll at some point say 'close enough' & take inventory asset write-offs to close out the change.

I've got excel apps (with hooks into Vantage via BAQ exports) to help the planners do this. In our environment, I don't believe we'd get better change process results trying to use Vantage's simple auto-change mechanisms.

That said, I'd love to hear about it (re the specific business case(s) & solution(s)) if you get either of these features effectively working for you. Â

We don't use these features now - but I learned 30 years ago to 'never say never' - except in some very rare cases where IT based 'auto solutions' aren't yet close (in fact this latest wave of ERP systems out there aren't as good as products from 10-20 years ago in some areas... too focussed upon 'latest greatest' frameworks & beleding edge technology and a loss of focus on efficient apps that add value to the people that use them) - on any system I've ever used (or seen) - to replacing the quality results humans achieve.

Please keep in touch.

Rob Brown




________________________________
From: pbriscoe10 <pbriscoe10@...>
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 11:09:28 PM
Subject: [Vantage] Seeking Ideas: Phasing In New Part Numbers





Hello,

We would like to phase in new part numbers and are thinking of the best way of going about it.

We build kits. The components of these kits will be undergoing some changes that require us to change their part numbers. What we would like to do is slowly phase in the new part numbers whenever inventory for the current part number is depleted. For example, when kit component ABC1 has its inventory depleted, we would like Vantage to automatically switch over to the new part number ABC2.

Our Concept:

We are trying to find a way for the system (MRP) to recognize when ABC1 runs out of stock and then switch over and start making ABC2 to replace ABC1. We thought that by selecting the "Run Out" option and deselecting "Run MRP" on Part Maintenance of ABC1 we would stop MRP from suggesting new jobs for it; it did. We also thought that by adding ABC2 as a substitute part to ABC1, we could have MRP start creating jobs for ABC2 once ABC1 was depleted and had the "Run Out" option selected; it did not.

Idealy, we would like to see MRP suggest a job to create ABC2 and use it to fulfill the demand for ABC1. However; it seems that this is not how the relationship works. If anyone has any suggestions as to how we could go about phasing in our new part numbers (which must be done) while still being able to use up the stock of our old part numbers, we would love to hear them.

Note: The option of moving our quantities over from the old part numbers to the new ones and then rebuilding our kits won't really work since we won't know right away what the new part numbers are going to be (customer dependent).

Thank you.







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