We have temperature sensitive materials that are stored in a freezer, currently we have a paper log that has to be filled in manually every time the material is taken out of the freezer (>0° F) wait for it to thaw, consume it and then put it back, so we track:
-Total time outside >0°
-Date pulled out of freezer
-Date put back in freezer
-Quantity used
-Operator
Is it possible to achieve this in Epicor without any ‘customization’, just with the tools that are available and set it up?
If your employees are responsible, you should be able to track all of that in a job.
-Date pulled out of freezer - Issue Material
-Date put back in freezer - Return Material
-Quantity used - Issued minus Returned
-Operator - User ID on transactions
How would you split it terms of operations? Only 1 operation or how many?
And how is that traced back to the material itself and not the job for the part?
I would only do 1 operation, but not 100% sure what you are doing.
The material for the job would be whatever is frozen, not the finished product. I’m assuming that you are either lot or serial tracking. All material transactions against a job are captured.
Thanks.
Correct, an internal control number assigned to that roll. That number can be used to retrieve PO, lot, roll, DoM, DoE, etc.
Hey,
We do this using inventory movements.
Expanding on what John K said
Assuming the material is a roll of a
100 ft
Use standard functionality three steps
Issue the whole roll of 100 ft
Do your operation
Return the balance of the roll 75 ft
The user doing the transaction and the times are tracked on the Parttran table
No manual logging is required
Thanks,
Why cannot you issue to the job directly from the freezer? Personal choice or because that’s the way the system is setup?
We need to issue the material directly from the freezer, at least that how our current manual process is setup.
We have other warehouses but any of the other 2 are not compatible with our materials, so they cannot be close let alone in the same facility.
If we over issue to the job and then return unused materials, the net is OK. But some transactions like Job Split and Scrap work on the current value in the job and those numbers might get inflated.
Just something to consider for those who use those time-sensitive transactions.
One important thing to consider when doing full lot control with expiration dates is to make sure that each controlled “container” has a separate lot number. One place I worked purchased two different types of material that had different tracking requirements…
One was spools of wire. We might purchase 10 spools… but because each spool could have a different “life” we created 10 different lot numbers. While each lot we created came from the same Manufacturing lot, we still needed to track the difference between lot 1 and lot 2. WHY? If someone happened to “drop” a spool, it could damage all the wire in an imperceivable way.. but we might not know it until after we used wire, at which point, lots of failures started happening. we needed to isolate all the parts that were manufactured with that particular spool.
Another was Epoxy where we had to track each individual can of epoxy. Each one had its own life… open the can, it shortened the life. leave it out of the freezer, it shortened the life. For this reason, we would split each can into its own internal lot number (again… the MFG lot was the same for all the cans). This allowed us to reset the expiration dates for each can separately, and/or reinspect the cans and recertify them for a longer shelf life if kept in the freezer.
If the part should be uniquely identified why not just use a serial number? Seems simpler than trying to enforce a different lot number for each piece assuming a job produces > 1.
Lots have the Expire Date as an attribute to track against that. And there is a process that you can run that identifies the expired product you have in stock.
You can get handheld devices that are designed to work in cold climates.
And just in case you are entertaining using Shelf Life Days. That effectively adds the number of days in that field to the Lot Expiry date.
If the unit of measure is always whole, you could. But you can’t issue a fraction of a unit if using serial numbers.
Those are good points. I still want to know how you can enforce a new lot for every individual piece assuming your job qty is more than 1. Is there some way to do it other than with a bpm?
You would have to do that many transactions for receiving or job receipt. If job is for 2, 2 job receipt to inventory.
Right I understand but how would you enforce that because nobody is going to remember to do that.