Currently I’m using 9.05.701, and working on the update to 10.1 as well. I would appreciate some feedback on the following topic. Today’s manufacturers have switch to lean manufacturing and using cells. So you have 5 people in a cell working together as a tight group. This 5 person cell only designates one person to clock in and out of the job versus all 5 people doing the same epicor activity separately. I’m quite certain that E9 does not use the crew size field for reporting actual labor costs; so if the crew worked 2 hours then there would only be 2 hours reported versus multiplying in by 5 crew size for 10 total hours. Crew size only seems to have an effect on planning and on bom cost reporting.
Assuming I’m correct in the above situation, will this logic still hold true in E10, or will E10 have the ability to apply crew size toward the actual labor costs?
I would appreciate any feedback on what your company is doing with cell manufacturing as well? Do you just set up a “dummy” employee and apply an hourly labor rate of 5 people? So one person clocks in and out and may have a hourly rate set up of $100 ($20perhour x 5 people)?
Thank you
To get actual labor costs, you could do one of two things: The “dummy” employee can be set up for the hourly rate of 5 people or have all 5 employees clock in and out but only 1 person reports a quantity completed (everyone else reports 0 quantity).
In E10 (I’m not sure if this is in E9), there are 4 different Labor Entry settings in the Job for each Operation:
Time and Quantity
Backflush
Quantity Only
Time - Backflush Qty
Here is what the Field Help says about it:
Labor Entry
Specifies the type of labor that this operation requires. Select the labor type from the list.
Tip: This information is useful for a backflush operation. For more information about backflush labor, see Backflushing Labor.
Thanks for the response Beth. In our past, we have tried using the clock in and out for the other 4 people, with each one reports a zero quantity. However, we are focused on a lean environment whereby we are trying to eliminate as much non-productive time and eliminate as much transaction time as possible. Plus, with 1 person responsible for job entry versus 5 separate people, this exponentially reduces the potential for job reporting errors, (less auditing time for me as well). So these are the reasons why we want to continue down the path of 1 person responsible for the manufacturing cell.
We used backflush in the past, but here again we want the manufacturing cell to only be 1 operation, not 5 different operations.
So it looks like you will have to set the labor rate for the one person clocking into the job equal to 5 people or write a BPM to add the additional labor.
The crew size is just for planning and cost estimating, not actual job costing.