We are planning to begin splitting jobs in Epicor. Historically we have not split jobs inside Epicor. Instead, we maintained the paperwork trail outside of Epicor, then waited for all the split lots to close before we could close the original job. I am sure you can imagine some of the issues related to this process.
Moving forward we want to begin splitting jobs in Epicor. My question is, can a job be split after the fact? For example, Job 12345/1 is built for 100 pieces. The first three ops are complete with 100 pieces each. However, after the third op, 10 pieces were split off and sent ahead to heat treatment. The remaining 90 pieces sit with the original job.
We sent the 10 pieces along and now they have been through heat treat and are waiting at op 120. Now we never split this job in Epicor before, so our question is, how do we split a job after the fact and document the costs properly?
I assume it simply is not possible. How would you capture the work that was documented against 12345/1 for the split lot, when the work was not split in Epicor until after the fact? We have considered closing the original job and creating a new job for the 90 pieces and the remaining ops, and a new job for the 10 pieces and the remaining ops.
I think this approach could work; we just have to be careful to make sure we document the operations required at the new split jobs.
Moving forward if we split jobs in Epicor at the time we physically split the jobs on the floor, then we shouldn’t run into this issue.
Ther are various reasons we split a job, but it all comes down to some parts moving ahead of the rest. It may be that the customer wants to expedite a handful of parts. Or it may be that we don’t have the hardware to finish assembling the remaining parts. Either way, in the end some parts stay with the original job, and wait to either be split again, or finished. The split lot moves ahead to the next operation with all the necessary paperwork to track the movement.
We need separate jobs to track this activity because some split jobs may move ahead much faster than their parent job. And the parent job may sit in limbo for a long time waiting on more splits or to be finished.
If your operators are already reporting their production activities in MES you should have the data you need in PartWip and JobOper to ascertain how far along you are with a certain job.
I think the issue I am facing is that the employees would have already documented their time and pieces against an operation on the main job. I want to split the job after the fact. I am pretty sure it is not possible out of the box. Are you suggesting creating a BPM or something that allows me to transfer costs from the job they documented it on, to the job I split after the fact?
No, I am actually struggling to understand why you need to split the job at all. How many pieces need to be made, and how many have already been made and what step in the process each WIP quantity is at are all visible with just the one job existing.
The jobs need to be split to allow some pieces to move ahead of the rest of the pieces on the job, and to document the time and quantity correctly. For example: We have job 12345/1 for 100 parts with 10 operations. All 100 parts have been through ops 10, 20, 30 and 40. Now there is a delay, and only 20 parts can move on to the next operation. Folks on the floor copy the paperwork and change the lot to 12345/1A. We don’t split this in Epicor. Epicor just thinks that 80 parts are sitting there on /1 waiting for the next op, and 20 pieces have gone on to the other ops. Let’s say those 20 go all the way through and are ready to ship. So we ship off the 20 pieces from the job. In Epicor we only have 12345/1, not he split for A, so all the time and expense gets applied to 12345/1.
We want to come in the next day and look at what night shift was able to split off, and then update Epicor to reflect those splits. So if they split off 20 pieces, I want to come in and split 12345/1 into 2 jobs in Epicor. But the labor and other transactions are all on the first job, and only labor or transactions that occur after I split the job will get added to the split job.
This is why I think I can’t split after the fact. Does that make sense?
Splitting jobs can be done.
First key question what is your demand link on the job?
Make to Stock - Your asking for trouble with the costing.
Make to Order - you may be able to get by with this, but, issues with costing for each partial shipment may not be consistant.
What will happen with the 20 that are expedited, when they are transacted as Mfg-CUS or Mfg-STK - 20/100 or 20% of the current WIP cost will be moved to Cost of Sales from WIP.
Do some testing - you can’t plan on “it should work like this”
I swear this the opening line to every compliance problem I’ve ever had here.
Yes. The built-in job split tool will divide up labor and material costs. Note that the original labor transactions will remain on the original job. The system will add a negative labor transaction to the original job, and a corresponding positive amount to the split job, under a special JOBSPLIT employeeID
On the material side, there will be ADJ-MTL transactions for each material moving the qty and cost to the new job.
Ideally, you want to avoid splitting jobs in the first place by sizing your jobs to your constraints ahead of time, but there isn’t really an issue with doing it before or after you release the job.
You do have square everything before completing the last op though.
Lets say Op 50 is a long running op. Each piece takes 8 hours of machining time. So they push through as many as they possibly can before the cutoff. At some point a supervisors says thats enough and splits the job so that we can get the 20 finished parts through to the heat treater (subcontractor) op. If we knew ahead of time that we would be forced to split off 20, then we could have made our original jobs at that size, but as it stands we don’t know about those 20 getting split off until they actually get finished. We might hope for 20 to go to heat treat, but due to the long cycle times, the operator scrapped a few and now only 15 parts are ready for the next op.
Eventually yes, night shift could do the splitting in Epicor and then document their time against the right split job. Right now, night shift is not trained on using epicor beyond reporting time/qty in MES.
Totally! I am getting closer and closer to thinking that splitting jobs after the fact is simply no possible. I can see how we can split jobs and maintain their costs throughout the splits, but if we split after the work has been logged there is no easy way to get that data back to the correct split job.
Our jobs are linked to sales order releases, and a little both of make to stock to account for overage. Since we are not using MRP, this is all done manually.
Yes, testing is a huge part of this. I am running simulations in Pilot to test various scenarios.
This is our end goal. Setting our lot sizing correctly is a huge pain.
We must split the job to allow x pieces to get to finish and get shipped. A customer has said that they need x parts now. Leaving all the work on the original job does work. At least that’s what we do now. All the work (for split jobs and the main job) is applied at the main job level. If a job gets split on the floor then our finance person has to wait for all the split jobs to come back and for the main job to come back before the job can be closed. This leaves jobs open much longer than they realistically should be.
All transactions performed PRIOR to a job being split will be on the original job, and there is no out-of-the-box way to move them onto the split job IF the split occurs AFTER the transaction. I suppose it could be done with some custom programming, but you would be not just asking but more likely begging for trouble.
You would need to split the job BEFORE anyone clocked into op 50 so that your operators are clocking into the NEW job number that was created by the split… otherwise they are clocking into the operation on the OLD job number.
I can see why you need the split, as a Make to Order job can have significant costing issues if the quantity shipped hasn’t completed its operations… but in reality it means you need to follow the process as closely as possible and perform the Job Split function before anyone clocks into the operation where the split will occur. And that means someone at that point in time needs to decide how many pieces will be made before cutoff.
If those limitations can’t be met, then we need to think of another solution OR see if a customization can be developed.
