So we have a situation where there is a special order item that is in what is generally considered a consumables for. It’s some special Epoxy that we don’t keep in stock (and it’s expensive so we don’t want to just chalk it up to overhead). It’s sold by the tube, but it doesn’t take a whole tube to do one job, so if we happen to have 3 jobs going through relatively close to each other, we can buy one tube and be good.
Is there a way to set this up so that purchasing can get this rounding up on their PO? For example if we have the part set up as ea, but have say .33 on the BOM for the job. It’s on 2 different jobs that are being worked in in succession. The purchase suggestions would see .33 and .33 on the releases, and the line would have .66. Can I get it so the system rounds up to 1 and distributes the extra to each of the jobs?
This seems fairly specific, but I wouldn’t think that it would be that uncommon for these types of situations, is it?
I’m guessing it’s going to take a BPM and a UD field in the part record to set this up… But if you know an as built way to do this. Let me know.
Check out The Multiple field under Lot Sizing of the Planning Tab in the Site Tab of Part Maintenance. If set to one, it will always round up to one tube. If set to 12, it will round up to a dozen.
When I read the field description, it looked like it only pertained to manufactured parts using MRP. I didn’t think it would work with purchased parts. I’ll give that a try.
It kind of works. I rounds up each release (like I expected) but we need it to round up at the line level. If I have somewhere that uses .1 of a tube in 15 places, I want 2 tubes (.1 * 15 = 1.5 round up to 2) not 15 (.1 rounded up to 1 * 15 = 15).
I guess I didn’t really expect the system to be handle that level of figuring. (too many variables for each different customer)
In E9, so you will have to test this in 10 the MfgLotMultiple was also used for purchase suggestions. It is on the part - plants – planning tab. If you set a min order qty of 1 and a multiple of 1 you would always get whole unit suggestions.
I am not aware of any system method to backfill the jobs with the remains of the tube.
Also keep in mind, this is for buy direct to the job materials only. We do not want any left in inventory after we are done which is why we aren’t buying to inventory, we need it all issued. (and a manual issue in this company is like going to the moon). So when the same part is used in multiple places, you get another release on the PO. It’s not aggregated like when you order to inventory, in which case the rounding would work correctly for the ordering, but not for the issuing.
Yeah, the field name and description would lead you to believe that. I found it in one of the tech references with a PO example and then copied the field to the purchasing area of part maintenance, so I didn’t have to remind the buyers where it was.
If you knew the number of jobs to spread the excess over, either by manual entry or the life of epoxy, then you can put the remaining qty divided by jobs as a scrap qty and it would go to the job and possibly get the PO suggestion to a whole number. You could manipulate the PO suggestion to a whole number when the buyers workbench opens to get rid of decimals from rounding.
I was confused by the subject heading, you want to issue in tubes, not purchase.
What about changing the UOM for tubes (or create a new one called Full Tube) and not allow decimals for that UOM. Each job will get at least one full tube scheduled but you could share between jobs and not issue a tube to one or another.
It’s both. I only want to buy what I want to issue. And when you purchase direct, it issues to the job automatically, so whatever you buy is what’s issued.
Then the purchase suggestions would show lots of tubes, when you didn’t need to buy that many, and the manual issue thing for our company is not going to happen, unfortunately.
I will probably do something like that, except I will have the purchaser manipulate the releases on the PO instead of on the jobs so that the line ends up at a round number. Since the materials are purchase direct, if you increase what is purchased, it will automatically issue those to the job when it’s received, even if it’s more than the required qty (I tested that out yesterday). I’ll probably make a BPM to tell the purchaser that he has a material that needs to be purchased at a lot size, and tie in a UD field for setting up those types of parts.
Thanks for the discussion guys. It’s nice to have people to kick ideas around with and learn new things. I had no idea that the lot sizing thing would work with PO suggestions, so that’s good to know. I’m sure I’ll find something in the future where we will need that.
