Can any of that be simplified? How many different endings (the -HT3) part are there? More than 26? If not, use a letter code. People will catch on. They learned what HT3 meant, didn’t they?
They’re not feeling the pain they are inflicting. So, if it’s good for engineering let’s make it so for HR. From now on, instead of being employee 1017 or Bill, have HR make every person (which are highly configurable), use each persons description in everything they do: You might be:
JDJ-WM-1984-EIS-CA-3-C
which are employees initials, ‘race’, ‘Sex’, birth year, English-Irish-Scottish, born in California, third child your mother birthed, with the corrective eye-lens option. Put THAT in the Company Directory and on the badges.
Or, pick a nice easy string like Jeremy D Jones. 
If they want to run the company like they did 20 years ago, consider using Excel.
OMG! Parenthesis and decimals too!!!
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I agree with the logic but of course that will affect all other product lines which is the main issue. Without changing how they have done it up to this point.
I agree completely! 
@jdjones -
FWIW - I feel your pain. Last thing you want to do is blame the new system for why they have to change. If they start off disgruntled, they’ll be looking for every opportunity to bash the new system, which will result in you doing unnecessary customizations to placate the folks with the pitchforks and torches.
But on the other hand … now is the time to slaughter sacred cows that are in your way (for now, and in the future).
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Mark, what happens when his twin James gets a job there?
(assuming the parents never told them which was older - i.e. born first)
Like I said, Smart systems always breakdown eventually… 
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MANY MANY years ago, I purchased a bunch of Gateway computers… one of them was bad (only one?) and I had to do a return… I called in to get get a replacement… of cource, they said I needed an RMA number and I should write it down on the box… They asked me all sorts of questions. Original Order number, my po number, the date I received it, etc, etc etc… Then they gave me an RMA number. He said “Write this down, it is rather long”… about 50 digits later, (and after running out of room on one line of paper) I had my RMA number… In looking at it I realized that it was a configuration of all the facts I had just given him. It included my order number, po number, todays date, the order date, the part number i was returning, etc, etc… Rather than simply having the “next sequential” number as an RMA, they basically built a database record into the RMA number. (I guess I wrote it down correctly, as I did get my replacement).
Thank you all for your replies! It’s been extremely helpful and I love the cringe worthy story times.
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@timshuwy - as an Epicor Insider, why weren’t part records automatically assigned a sequential ID number for use internal to the ERP program, while displaying the user defined “PartNumber”?
Like how Customer and Vendor have CustNum & CustID, and VendNum and VendorID.
The PartNum would be the hidden sequential integer, and PartID would be the user facing reference to that PartNum.
Then when your company changes, you could change a part’s PartID, and everything remains linked in BOM’s Jobs, Orders etc…
As a matter of fact, I have argued that we should do this… it was this way in at least one of our legacy products called Avante’ (AKA Infoflo). Avante’ assigned every part number what it called a “CPN” (Computer Part Number) that was a permanent part ID… then in the Part Cross Reference, there was the human readable version. ONE of the cross reference PNs needed to be the “primary” but beyond that, you could have as many different references as you desired.
Having this always added a little extra challenge, because you always had to link to the cross reference to find the real part number in Queries and reports, but you are correct… it makes the changing of part numbers much easier when merging two companies who might have two different PN schemes.
Since E10.0, EVERY record in Epicor gets a GUID. Like @timshuwy says, the tricky part is all the cross-reference tables one would need to add…to everything. Not a small job.
But that is almost never (if ever) referenced in another table.
Right. That’s part of the cross-referencing job that would need to be done when you remove the other key fields…
How about making the GUID a combination of sequential IDs. Like
cccc-ssss-pppp-nn-i-t-g-k
where
cccc - company
ssss - site
pppp - partID
nn - lot or S/N controlled flags
i - inactive
t - type (purch, mfg, kit)
g - Prod Group
k - Part Klass
When I started at my current company there was a almost 2 year long effort to going live on e10. One configurator was built (pretty much all that had been done in the whole system) and the first problem/solution I faced was the configurator not outputting more than 50 characters. I knew nothing about Epicor let alone ERPs at the time, but I took on the project myself and somehow we managed to go live 4 months later!
We use the semi-smart part number system. Our products are highly configurable with millions of different combinations you could possibly get. The main characteristics of the product are listed in the part number so you can get a pretty good idea of what the product is by looking at the number. For all the small little details we add in a configuration specific suffix ending with -AA, -AB -AC…etc. The description and manufacturing comments take care of the details.
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I find this thread fascinating. I points out a couple of very important points. The first is the Epicor 10 is built to run a mfg company - it has some hard wired design concepts around the part number and how it is used. Second point - in any manufacturing environment, the “part” is the single most pervasive and problematic piece of information. Third, the most important thing about a part number in an ERP system is that you can find it! By the way, this also holds true on the manufacturing floor and warehouse as well.
So, my suggestion would be to first learn how Epicor thinks a manufacturing site should be run within the design of the product, then second figure out the best way to find the parts you need, and last, figure out what the part number should look like.
I know, probably sounds backwards - but very important.
If you try to make Epicor 10 work like your last ERP system, you will just get a newer version of the same old problem.
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