Thoughts on... changing search from Part Master to a PartPlant using a search BAQ

I was wondering if anyone has implemented, or those with more experience could weigh in, if it is worthwhile changing the search on Order Entry & PO Entry to return results from partplant rather than part.

That way parts can be loaded into the part master while we get our BOMs ready. We have two sites currently, one active & one not. I am hoping to load parts to allow BOM creation in the site that is not active but stop sales staff selling parts on those BOMs as they will not have a partplant entry for the active site.

If I load tens of thousands of parts for BOM creation I am concerned sales staff/purchases could sell one on an order if they see it on the list.

Thanks in advance.

So, tangent to this idea. If this does happen (part gets on the PO or SO), the plant of the release will be the inactive one.

In more words:

  1. Part ABC is in site NewPlant but not site MfgSys
  2. User is in MfgSys; makes a PO for ABC
  3. Release of that line is for NewPlant and you cannot change it
  4. They go to receive the part in MfgSys and they cannot.

I don’t know if that helps or is irrelevant, but that’s how it works.

Frankly, I need to make a BPM myself to stop them from doing that here. It’s annoying.

Thanks Jason. In addition to changing the search binding I may try to get a BPM going as well. epicor can handle multiple sites but not sure our staff can! Definitely needs a process review in the software as I’m catching Orders against the wrong site even now i.e. without needing to restrict what they see so if even if I do restrict Epicor could change to the wrong site if it’s valid the part can be sold in either of them.

Are you aware of the product group setting? You set a sales site and any line that uses that group will put that site on the release. You know, if the part is actually set up for that plant.

So, your problem will NOT be avoided by this, sorry, but I just wanted you to know about it anyway.

For us, I set a BPM to put the right group on orders when they are created (but let them override as needed). Again, not foolproof.

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Thanks Jason, I wasn’t aware of Product Group items. I will review. The fact you’re putting a BPM in place as well cements the fact that Epicor has a couple of gaps on this.

Cheers

Matt

Well, everyone is different.

We sell new trucks (in MfgSys) and replacement parts for the trucks (another site called PDC). But the replacement parts are, of course, the same exact part numbers as what goes in the trucks. So having the sales product group defined on the part itself (Part Entry) would cause problems for us (RMAs for example). So we manually put a different prod grp on every line of every order. Well, the BPM does it actually.

For you or other users, the part might only exist in one way - as a sellable item - so that might be just fine to put the sales prod grp on the part and then no BPM needed.

A lot of people would have made us two companies, not sites, but I REALLY insisted on having a unified part master, so we went with sites. OK, I did, and everyone had to go along for the ride. It’s still the right decision.

Some companies have added a “Part.Saleable_c” UD Field to the Part table. And then mark it as true if the item is saleable… then they modify the part search in order entry to eliminate the non-saleable items… also for extra security, make a BPM that prohibits an item from being sold unless it is saleable.

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Thanks Tim. I have your record level security post bookmarked for just this occasion. Our go-live is next year so a bit of time to work on this.

Hi Jason,

I think we are the same as you. Main site builds then 2nd site sells parts to customer for repair. So in main site parts are purchased to build but in 2nd site purchased and sold. Only thing ever sold in main site is the finished manufactured product. We could conceivable have RMAs for the same part in both sites so I will investigate further.

Thanks again