Suppose we have 2 flow lines. Each one is identical with 4 stations. In theory, I’d have 4 resource groups each with 2 resources. A BOO would identify the resource group for each of the 4 operations and the system could schedule on either of the two flow lines. But once it starts on one line, it must finish on the same line. Is there a certain way to set this up? Or does it turn into a manual process when scheduling the jobs to ensure they stay in the same line?
I saw a previous thread on this that went unanswered…
I built a customization at an old company around cells that would “force” a job into a cell based off of the first operation. The first operation was the gating factor as the first operation was on different machines, a punch for cell 1 and a laser for cell 2. Beyond the first operation, they had the exact same resources. It started to get a little wonky when we started using Capabilities.
It is possible to do with a decent amount of BPMs, but it was difficult and required a lot of planning and setup. I had to make sure that resources had IDs that identified which cell they were in so I could easily force the following resources to get selected correctly. It worked, but the business ended up being too dynamic for it to be sustained.
Not knowing what modules you have and the regular flow of business makes it hard to answer your question. Do you run MRP and Scheduling on a regular basis? How are your Jobs created, MRP or manually? If you lay out more of the process that you use today, we might be able to offer better possible solutions.
We run MRP each night. But we don’t use the Epicor scheduling tools. Jobs get created by MRP and then manually firmed up near the job start date. Up until today, we have run everything infinite and just let it schedule everything where the order drives it… we apply our planning/scheduling effort at the sales order level and only plan them to a date after we’ve confirmed we’ll have material and capacity available. Everything is make to order. However, the new building we’re almost ready to move into is purpose built for one segment of our business that doesn’t fit neatly into the rest of our business. Custom truck installation type business. It is very cumbersome in that it has many moving parts (some of which is outside of Epicor entirely). It requires a person to really babysit it the whole way through. So, that’s what I’m specifically asking about.
With all that said, we have a clean slate. And I’m trying to do my due diligence to make sure we’re doing it the best way we can.
There are two types on truck installs we’ll be doing there. 1 is cellular in that we will pull a truck into a bay, do work on it there, test it, and then drive it out when it’s all done. That part is pretty easy and we’ve done this forever. The other way is new to us. It’s setting up a production line - where we will do a high volume of the same truck. That’s where my question was stemming from.
Assuming you are staying infinte scheduled it is not too bad. I have a generic ASMCTR that gets replaced when the JobOprDtl record is created with where they want to move the job. We can update that job and it resources to any other team at any time in the process.
I pulled up the code and it is some ugly stuff that started as ABL, but you are welcome to it as a starting place.
Based on your current process, I would think about putting a flag on the Job header that determines which line you want it to go on and have that update the resources to make sure they are the correct one and then lock the Job. Especially if there is a babysitter.