We are testing out the different combinations between serial tracking and lower level serial tracking in the site configuration.
I have not been able to understand how Lower Level Serial Tracking comes into play. For that matter, I am not sure how Epicor defines “Lower Level”.
I was hoping someone could give me a brief description of what Epicor considers to be “Lower Level” and what are the transactions/processes that would be impacted by the Lower Level Serial Tracking options (Full or Outbound).
The best way to think about this is a multi-level BOM. Let’s say the below was a job for 10 pieces.
Asm 0 - Serial Tracked
-Mtl 10 - Serial Tracked
-Mtl 20
-Asm 1
–Mtl 10
–Mtl 20 - Serial Tracked
-Asm 2 - Serial Tracked
–Mtl 10 - Serial Tracked
Using the above, if you do not have Lower Level Tracking on, the job will output 10 serial numbers. Those 10 parts will have a serial number but you will not know which serial numbers went into them. There will be no lineage from bottom to top. You can still see what serial numbers were used in a job through PartTran, but you will not know where they ended up.
If you do have Lower Level Tracking on, then your employees will need to match the child serial numbers in the job to their parent. Then you will have the full lineage of serial numbers per 1 piece.
The question to ask yourself is, if there were a recall, do you want to know exactly where the recalled part is? With Lower Level Tracking on, you will be able to pinpoint exactly where the recalled serial number is. So, with the above, you would only have to recall the 1 piece from that job that was recalled. If you don’t have Lower Level Tracking on, you would have to recall the whole job because all you would know is that the recalled serial number was used in the job but not which finished good it was actually in.
Thanks John. This was helpful.
Currently, we do have Full Tracking for both Serial Tracking and Lower Level and this creates the scenario you defined where we can pinpoint exactly what serial number went into which top level serial number.
So Lower Level Tracking is what controls the matching process.
If I change Lower Level from Full to Outbound, what does that mean? What process/transaction would trigger the Outbound for lower level?
@jkane is correct…
One other way that I have historically described this is:
I manufacture Computers.
My computers are serialized.
My computers have a disk drive that is also serialized
I want to keep track of the disk drive’s serial number that I installed into the computer.
i create a JOB for 10 computers, each of which has two Disk drives.
when I issue 20 disk drives, I need to specify which serial numbers were issued, but I don’t yet know which drive is installed into which computer (the computer’s serial numbers may not exist yet.
along the process, you create computer serial numbers
somewhere along the way, someone will need to assign the lower level SN (disk) to the upper level SN (computer). This does NOT have to be done before finishing, or even shipping the computer. but it needs to be done, and there is a process to do “serial matching” to specify the parent/child relationship.
ALSO… what you get with this… when you ship serial number X of your computer, the system also transfers ownership of the two disk drives to the same customer.
Later when the customer tries to return a disk drive… you can verify that the serial number they are returning is what was installed in the computer.
it has been a very long time since i have done outbound AND lower level… i believe that (using my previous scenario), if you are doing outbound only, then you do not assign the SN at the job, but instead, you only define the SN of the shipped computers at shipment… I believe that you can do that lower level SN Matching at the same time.