Using reservations or allocations for long projects - does this work

Kinetic ERP
1

I am trying to come up with a solution to help with long lead times, and projects that are becoming problem child’s by having customers prepay “parts” so I can hold them in my inventory without sitting on a bunch of inventory that does not move for months.

Here is my scenario:
We are in the business of building police cars.
Many parts have 2-3 month lead times.
We are told that the vehicle we build on is coming in may, but in reality it shows up in september due to chip shortages.
In may, I have a shelf full of parts for that car that was supposed to show up in may, but now got rescheduled to September.

I reschedule that job, and work to use the parts from the first job, on a different job

Then let epicor reschedule the first and let stuff reorder.

Under normal circumstances that would work, However, NOW the parts for that first car jumped in lead time, By nearly double, And wont actually make it in time for the new (and now way late) delivery date of the first car.

So I have customers that wonder why I don’t have everything in stock ready to go when their car finally arrives 3 months later then they thought…

To help resolve this, I am allowing customers to down pay parts to help buffer this issue, so I can hold their parts in inventory, Now I need the solution to hold them in inventory and actually have them when their vehicle finally shows up.

So My initial thought is to go allocate (and not pick) everything I can in fullfillment workbench for that car, but the question is, Will the system now order earlier for anything those allocations might have reserved (for a job 10 months down the road??)

For example: Siren Speaker - 10 On hand. I allocate 2 for a job 10 months away, 10 other jobs scheduled using those speakers need them over the next 10 days. Will it order more siren speakers now? or is it still counting the full on hand inventory and the fact that I don’t need those 2 allocated ones for 10 months. I want to make sure that those parts are sitting in inventory NOW since they prepaid them.

We looked at “picking” those cars now, but it is kinda painfull too. Many of the parts are large, and fit nicely in their inventory location. Prepicking them 10 months early would be really hard on the warehouse space.

I hope that made sense.

Thanks for your help!

2

Reserving or allocating VIA Fulfillment Workbench has no effect on on-hand quantities.

FWB uses a metric Epicor calls ‘Available’ inventory, which is on-hand minus any quantity already reserved and/or allocated. FWB uses this available inventory to determine what is available to you to reserve or allocate to a job/order.

3

Are you using MRP to generate your Jobs and PO suggestions?

4

yes, we are using full mrp, and scheduling. in a better parts world, this would never be an issue. But with lead times being all over the place, I just want to “overload” inventory based on prepaid jobs.

5

So if 10 are allocated, for 9 months down the road, it will not let me allocate and pick 10 for todays jobs, right? so then does it work to up the stock level to avoid that problem?

6

Yes exactly. We use FWB to manage allocations for materials on jobs and finished good for orders. FWB does a lot of things, but I would say the main thing it does for us is exactly what you want here, preventing you from robbing parts destined for one job to fill another. It stops you from ‘double dipping’ the same exact inventory to fill multiple jobs or orders.