Our production planner is in need of a dashboard that will show current min on hand and 3 month, 6 month, and 1 year usage so he can identify trends and update min on hand accordingly. Please note this dashboard should work for both purchased and manufactured parts(I could create 2 different BAQs if needed).
My first thought is to use the PartTran table to determine historical demand/usage although I was advised to be careful with using this table as it is quite large and will only grow with time so could result in a slow dashboard… Any recommendations on what table I should be looking at for this?
PartDtl stores the results of MRP runs. It’s essentially the master table for Time Phase.
SugPoDtl is where you find PO suggestions.
ShipDtl (and honestly, several other tables depending on what specific data points I’m looking for) for past shipments, but personally, I don’t go backwards too much. I’m paying for the MRP engine, so I prefer to tune MRP to run the numbers for me. So that may mean using Forcast or MPS Entry to plan out future demand that hasn’t been firmed into sales orders yet. It means tweaking Part master settings (days of supply, min/max, lot sizing).
I’ve been asked, at times in the past, to essentially duplicate the function of MRP. My recommendation is always to work with the system rather than alongside it.
@jtonsend thank you so much, I see that a lot myself - people wanting us to build functionality that already exists in Epicor. The issue typically is caused by the person not realizing how to use the tools they already have. I think in this situation I’m not realizing how to use MRP to solve this problem Below is some context if you could point us in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.
Our current processes are such that when we get a suggestion to buy or build(timephase and MRP) they review historical usage/demand. We have a custom crystal report that allows them to enter a part number and it shows min on hand, 3 mo usage, 6 mo usage, and 1 year usage. They then decide what our min on hand should be based on the trend and then make a decision of how many to build/buy as well. The crystal report they are using has been found to be returning bad data, I’d prefer to create a dashboard than monkey with the crystal report as I’m more familiar and our user’s prefer dashboards over crystal reports(can right click into other screens, loads faster, etc). Sorry long story short, how do you use the existing Epicor tools to figure out what the min on hand should be based historical trends?
Have you looked at the Calculate Min/Max/Safety processes that are available in Epicor? You can set some parameters on the Part Class and/or Part Record then run the Min/Max/Safety recalculation process to show you where changes are needed based on historical and future usage/demand
Below is some context if you could point us in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.