Hi everyone!
I am still working towards scheduling effectively in Epicor. Recently we purchased the APS module and I am beginning to experiment with capabilities. There seems to be a lot of flexibility.
I can set a capability to a resource, to an operation, or to another capability. I can also add resources to capabilities, and operations.
How do you all use your capabilities? Do you have a set way to create the dependencies. I am having trouble deciding which approach makes the most sense.
Perhaps an example would be helpful here.
We have a resource group of vertical milling machines. (4A - 16 machines) A subset of these machines can accommodate a bolt-on rotary table. The rotary tables are in their own resource group (4RT - 4 units).
There are some staff that can run the 4A machines, and a smaller subset of staff from that can also utilize the RT units.
So how would you setup this using capabilities?
Do I create a resource group for labor (LB) and add in 20 resources for the 20 people in the shop. Then assign a capability to each resource that defines what machines they can run? I think this way I can add multiple capabilities to each person resource.
Or, should I create a capability to use the RT unit, and add person resources to it?
It seems like I could easily build in some loops here if I am not careful.
Looking forward to your feedback and ideas.
Thanks!
Nate
Hoping that @Gil_V answers as he has been doing this stuff for a while. But I’ll take a stab first.
I would create 3 Resource Groups and 4 Capabilities.
Resource Groups - Employees, 4A and 4RT with the last 2 as Locations
Capabilities - 4A Skill, 4RT Skill, 4A and 4RT
4ASkill will contain all employees as resources that can run the 4A machines and the employees that can run the 4RT machines at a lower priority.
4RTSkill will contain only the employees that can run the machines as resources.
No operations on these 2 Capabilities.
4A will contain the Operation and all the 4A and 4RT machines as resources with the 4RT machines set at a lower priority.
4RT will contain the Operation and the 4RT machines as resources.
At the end of the day, the RG on a Capability does not matter if you are adding the individual resources. I have capabilities that contain resources from more than 1 RG.
start slow… build up your knowledge… this is my first advice.
Example Customer:
Machine Resource Groups:
CLCGroup1: Main CNC Machines had 6 identical machines
CNCGroup2: out in a remote building there was another 3 identical machines that were used for Repair work
In “normal” mode, the customer would setup their Manufacturing operations to use the “closest” machine or the work, and the repair jobs would use the repair machines. but there were times when the close machine was already consumed, and they would want to use that in addition. To accomodate this, they created two new CAPABILITIES.
CNC MFG Capability: This capability had all 9 machines listed, but the top 6 were designated as a higher prioirty.
CNC REPAIR capability: This capability had all 9 machines listed but the 3 repair machines had a higher priority.
THEN in the OPERATIONS they defined the correct CAPABILITY instead of Resource Group. Now when scheduling, the system automatically chose the best option.
This is a very simplistic view, but as I said… start slow, see how it works, and then add on.