I take offense when I am told that a bug in Kinetic/Epicor is actually due to my company’s strange process (where we use the system without customization).
But… I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m curious what you all will come up with.
So if anyone is feeling kind, I’ll describe what we have always done, and open it up to you all to say
Why our process makes no sense regardless of the ERP system
Or maybe it is reasonable but there is a better way in Kinetic
Or I suppose you are allowed to say, “That’s brilliant, Jason! Keep up the good work!.”
What we do
We build industrial trucks. We are an OEM - we build trucks from raw steel (well we do buy the engine or EV battery). Our customers operate at ports or distribution centers. Half-ish are street-legal. This is not relevant; it’s just fun background.
We are engineer to order (no configurator though). Sales orders are make-direct, because accounting.
Business model
[Made up approximate numbers ahead…]
95% of what we build has a customer already lined up well in advance
But 5% does not - we build some units in hope of selling them
Of those, let’s say 1% get received to Finished Goods Inventory
The other 4% end up being sold ahead of completion so they never even make it to inventory (which is great - we want to sell stuff!)
Current process
Everything is treated as if it was sold at the outset (like the 95% scenario above) - even if it wasn’t. (Again, all truck orders are make-direct.) To spell that out:
If there is a (real) customer already, we make a sales order
If we are building it without a (real) customer, we still make a sales order - to a dummy customer
When we complete a truck:
In scenario 1, we ship it to the customer from the job (MFG-CUS)
In scenario 2, we receive it to stock (MFG-STK) even though the demand link is for a sales order
(Yes, this is possible - simply using the normal Job Receipt to Inventory screen)
But obviously, this is the really unusual thing that we do.
Why do we do that?
So let’s back up. Actually, let’s work backwards.
People get upset when we run out of parts - meaning the material to build stuff here
Therefore we need to order parts in a timely fashion
Therefore it would be great if we had an ERP system to tell us this
Therefore we need demand for these parts - specifically demand that has due dates
Therefore we need jobs (for the finished goods) that are scheduled
Therefore we need (scheduled) demand for the finished goods
So as I see it, the ultimate need is a way to schedule the demand for finished goods.
For sold trucks that’s easy: create sales orders that are make-direct
But for trucks we are intending to build to stock, how do you schedule demand for those?
There is Master Production Schedule. I am not a fan - maybe I’ll explain in a reply…
Or there are sales orders, as we do now.
And that’s all I really know of. I suppose you could set a min/max; and for the sake of argument, there are other ways like Kanban. I don’t know that you could really schedule those, though.
In conclusion
Feel free to chime in on any step in the physical process or the thought process. I will try to remember that I asked for this…
So, why do you need demand to drive the creation when you can just create a job with an Inventory demand link? You are already somehow determining that you want to create one to inventory, why take the extra step of entering a SO when you can just enter a job.
So, as a rule we leave jobs unfirm as long as possible (this obviously assumes they are created by MRP). This way we don’t have to micromanage BOM changes on firm jobs.
I could go on, but I’m not trying to shoot the idea down; I’m just explaining my thoughts.
Are you looking for a job to drive the demand (with or without a sales order) for the finished part/truck?
Or, are you looking for demand to drive the raw material parts?
I would perhaps recommend looking at Planning Contracts and see if that may help. You can create demand through these (often used for long lead items) that aren’t on jobs yet. This can help get your raw materials on order. You can then link those Planning Contracts to sales orders and job materials later down the road.
If you create Jobs or Forecasts to drive demand, then you can avoid the “intelligent” overhead and allow the system design to work the way in which it was intended/created and save some “dummy” from lots of extra work
You enter forecast (speculative demand) and then MRP drives schedule jobs etc just like normal orders. But the nice thing is that it doesn’t double demand so if you tie a forcast to a customer when that customer orders it consumes that forecast too.
Otherwise use MPS (Master Production Schedule)
Which is basically the same as Forecast but it isn’t tied to a Customer. Use MPS Entry to create the demand and MRP will see and plan around it.
