What is the difference b/t batch and MFG batch tracking in Epicor?
Epicor’s field help provides identical definitions for the two fields, making this route worthless, very little instruction on the web seems to exist and consultants don’t have a great idea either.
Say I want mandatory lot and batch tracking for a material. For example, I have 1,000 lb of material from lot #1 and this lot contains batches #1-#10, with each batch weighing 100 lb.
While it is easy to issue material from lot #1 given that Epicor provides for lot entry, it is not obvious to me how to issue from the individual batches as there is no “batch entry” like there is “lot entry”.
As of now I am receiving into inventory lot #1 and concurrently recording the receipt of batches #1-#10 on the reference line via a text note during lot entry. When I issue the material to a job I choose from lot #1 and then record which batches are being issued via a text note, again on the reference line.
I can imagine a solution where I make (10) jobs for each of my (10) batches and batch the operations together, thereby allowing me to receive each of them into inventory and being able to issue material by individual batches to downstream jobs that consume the material, but I don’t want the tediousness of having to create so many jobs each day.
I’ve had lots of people ask me about a “sub-lot” solution along these lines… but Epicor doesn’t have that functionality out of the box.
IF your operators are particularly sharp on both the lot creation and lot issuance ends, and IF you can accept the longer character string (all pretty big IFs), then just making a longer-character Lot Number CAN work. A certain level of automation can also be written (such that when a LotNum is generated, it is automagically appended with a “-00”, and at each subsequent lot receipt the append is incremented).
Whatever solution works technically, it’s vastly more about the process so that operators can be trained to follow it by muscle memory.
Unfortunately you can’t have two lots with the same lot number and different batches.
Just spitballing but one way to automate would be to let the system create the normal job lot and transfer them into that lot corresponding with the job number. Create a custom field on lot representing your manufacturing batch. An integer with initial value of 0.
Then when you get the MFG-STK transaction on parttran, if the manufacturing batch number is 0, have a BPM create the new lot number which is Job (dash) Manufacturing batch 1 and have the BPM do an inventory transfer into that lot. Also increment the batch number on the original job lot to 1. For subsequent MFG-STK transactions add 1 to the manufacturing batch and create a new lot Job (dash) Manufacturing batch 2, do the inventory transfer and so-on.
Would need to play with MFG-STK returns to stock (negative transactions) and such. For example ignore any MFG-STK transactions where there already is a dash in the lot, I could see Lot abc-1-3-4-5-6-8-11 being created by an overactive user.
Batch, MFG Batch, MFG Lot, Heat Number and Firmware are just additional fields on the lot that you can open up for people to enter. We currently use MFG Lot to record the microchip date code from each lot of parts received. If we used the date code as the actual lot number it could be a problem because you would not know from which vendor you received the pieces if you got the same date code from two separate suppliers. Another problem is getting the same date code on separate receipts, each receipt from a different manufacturer / manufacturer part number combination referenced on the receiving records.