Does Epicor have functionality to handle VOI (vendor owned inventory)? We have a bin at a customer location and we replenish the bin based on an outside report. Order is entered with a job tied to it.
We make the part and then misc ship it to the customer. They receive it in and then when they consume any of the inventory, they would send us an email, which we then would ship the order and invoice.
The process is just manual and was hoping there’s a better workflow out there.
Thank you,
We have the same process and are doing exactly what you’re doing with Misc shipping with an extra step where we do a warehouse transfer to a “consignment” warehouse.
I’m just here to see if anyone else has better ideas
There isn’t a BETTER way. Depending on how your accounting people want to control/differentiate the inventory costing, you could set the customer location up as a separate SITE, and use the Transfer Order functionality to move items between your main location and the customer location. There are more transactions involved, and the Transfer functionality has more than its share of quirks, but if there is a shipping time between the two, using Transfers is a more accurate way of keeping track of time “in transit”.
Yikes! 
Indeed… sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. But I’ve set it up, and it works. Mostly for 3PL situations, but the concept is the same in this case.
Epicor does have something for this, but it needs to be managed well…supplier managed inventory (also customer managed inventory). Essentially you would set a bin to be assigned supplier owned. From memory you would receipt product to this bin and it would be held there from an AP point of view until to transfer out, it would then kick of the AP side…obviously a bit more complicated that this.
This is something you need to purchase from Epicor
Wouldn’t that be the opposite? They are saying the inventory belongs to them, but its at the customer location. I thought vendor managed inventory was for inventory at our location that belongs to the vendor?
true…haven’t had my coffee yet.
Did you add in any automation process to help with the workflow?
At one time, I thought this product was for “consignment” inventory at the customer’s facility and was invoiced when consumed - literally the opposite of Supplier Managed Inventory. But it is a useful module if you have customers who supply materials or if you perform a service on their material, i.e. you’re the outside processor. Keeps the costing nice and clean.
The out-of-the-box MRP process handles Transfers just like any other demand/supply link. If your inventory processes and shipping/receiving processes are handled correctly, I would start with that and then streamline the internal processes to see what (if any) workflow automation might help.
I’ve never added any customizations (besides the odd UD field and maybe a dashboard or two) so far, so all I can say is make sure that the standard process would truly benefit before trying to automate it. The Transfer functionality can be persnickety.
EDIT: I should add to this that to use MRP with Transfers, at the Site (Plant) level you need to change the Source Type value in the Warehousing Site to Transfer (from Manufactured or Purchased), and set the From site to the manufacturing/purchasing site.