Looking on suggestions on this. Our entire Epicor journey has been make to stock.
We build big machines with really two types of part. Purchased mechanical components that are working well as we can manage via min on hand and supplier lead times. Our steel is different and not working as well. We’ve lost visibility of what steel POs are bringing in for jobs.
My understanding, which could be wrong, is that all Make to Job options receipt items into WIP when received which would not work for us.
How do we get better visibility on Steel to show what QTY is for what job?
We did our steel as lbs in inventory, then had a steel issues to parts based on weight, since we got that from the CAD model.
Then you can use time phase to see the requirements for the steel. Or if you want it all grouped, create a BAQ on the part detail table to group it by Job.
You would use a UOM conversion from pounds to sheets. If you are buying to stock, this will get consolidated, it won’t be by job.
Are you buying the steel to stock? Or directly to the job?
One way to get the steel separated is to use planning contracts. If you set up a planning contract for each job, and then set the steel to come from the planning contract, you can have little mini warehouses of separated inventory by job. You’ll get separate suggestions, and you can move things in and out of the planning bin to “Allocate” it to the job.
Really the biggest downside to that is that Planning Contract bins are the same as inventory bins, so you can’t have it in a physical location, and a planning contract bin location at the same time. They added the ability to have more than one bin on a planning contract, but they are still planning contract specific bins.
I made a customization that would create the planning contract, and the bin to go with it, and tie it all together with a button click on order entry. It was nice for ordering long lead time parts before we had the job in the system since the full BOM wasn’t done before they needed to order the parts. The steel we just kept min and maxes of and didn’t use planning contracts for that.
@Matt_Belshaw I would try to use the JobMtl Comment and split PO Line on the Part Class to do this. This is from memory, but I believe the comment goes from the jobmtl to po suggestion and then onto the PO. Set the Job and material sequence in the comment and it should flow. The field help below shows Operation Comment, but I am pretty sure it works for us from the material comment. I also do a lot of shaping on PO suggestions, but I think this just works. If it only gets part way there is a fairly simple calculation using PartDtl to get what jobs are aligned with what suggestions.
Split PO Line
Indicates that purchase suggestions for part records with unique Purchasing comments should generate a different purchase order line for each part entry.
Example: Part DSS-1000 is requested by two different operation lines on a job. If this check box is selected and the Purchasing comments are different for each operation line, the parts are kept as two different purchase order suggestions. If the check box is cleared, the parts would be combined into a single purchase order suggestion.
Thanks for this Greg. We are currently using split po lines and PO comments for another item but will review this. Did you pre-populate the Job & material sequence in the Part Job comment before running PO suggestions? I could have a PO QTY for a piece of steel for 6 but would be needed as 2x Job1, 2x job2, 1x job3, 1x job4
Then split PO will then do the work on splitting the suggestion by job. If we then tweak the PO Suggestion search to find a specific JOBNUM in the comments then the buyer could select all those suggestions and press buy.
