We’re live since june. We’ve got our part revisions and MRP running just fine. Now, we are looking to manage part inventory by revision for two of our business division.
From what I’ve leaned (from EpiUserHelp and testing) so far, it seems to be very difficult to switch existing parts (with existing revisions) to “Track Inventory by Revision”:
You can’t just check the option in part entry, you have to run the UOM Conversion for each individual part (no DMT here)
Once a part is “Converted” to “Track Inventory by UOM”, each and every MOM that include that part are instantly in a state of failure because the PartRev field on PartMtl is not initialized. This issue is causing every job “Get Detail” to fail. See this thread for reference : Track Inventory by Revision - #23 by JaJuJo
Never tested it but, apparently, each subassembly needs to be “Track inventory by revision” as well otherwise it can create problems at the moment of reporting quantities with labor entries. Can’t find the thread but someone mentioned it here.
Also, the feature is fairly recent and seems a bit clunky. For reference, we’ve implemented AUOM and I’m getting the same vibe… we’re facing a lot of bugs and glitches.
Overall, from my perspective, implementing “Track inventory by Revision” seems a bit risky ; I get the vibe of a rabbit hole in the sense that the feature seems sound on the surface but I don’t know what I’m getting into
So, anyone can share their experience with the feature ?
We would always bake the revision into the part number, as our revision changes would always mean a physical or specification change, this makes it easy to manage.
I have seen others use lots, but i dont like this as it is easier to make a mess of.
There are however a couples of drawbacks to that, for example each time you create a new revision (new partnumber) you lose the part transaction history (sales). But the real challenge is that it would be a major change to engineering culture, as they are not working as per form/fit/function in their CAD management.
That’s the default option. But in my due diligence I need to know if “track inventory by revision” is viable
it would be easy to still track sales, with a UD field on the part. I also understand that Epicors advanced units of measure will control stock by revision.
In App Studio, I disabled the Track Inventory by Revision checkbox in Part Maintenance to prevent someone accidentally selecting it. I’m also concerned that this is something of an unfinished feature. Last time I looked on Problem Repository, there appeared to be multiple open issues with it that could be very problematic. I haven’t looked in the last few months, though.
I tried activating Track by Revision in 2023.2 after it was first introduced, and had the exact same problems. That customer turned it off and I don’t know that they’ve gone back to trying it again.
In My Not Very Humble Opinion…
If “Track Inventory by Revision” could be as easy as Track Lots, where when a part is moved into Inventory it carried the Revision from the job that created it, it would be much more “viable”.
BUT, it appears to have been implemented in a way that requires all lower-level assemblies to ALSO be tracked by revision, which leads to the requirement for Planning by Revision, which is an add-on module, which adds significant complexity. If those last “features” were optional and not required, this could be a very very very useful thing that some of my colleagues have been asking for since Vantage 5 or so. If all your Revision-labeled manufactured parts are single level, you’re in luck. Otherwise, not.