We are starting to build space products that require lot tracking all the way down to what lot was used on what reference designator on a board assembly. This would happen when you have many parts that are the same PN on one board and don’t have one lot of material to issue to the job.
How can we do this in Epicor 9? We have plans to go to Epicor 10, so if it’s possible there we can “get by” with 9 until we get there.
Thanks in advance!
Maggie
One of the companies I work for (which doesn’t use Epicor) has to track components that go into the products used for hazardous areas (explosion hazards).
The real goal of this tracking is that we could identify the serial numbers of the end products, given a specific component (or sub assembly) lot or serial number. For example, if a vendor notified us that they had accidentally put 100uF cap in where we called out a 1 uF cap, in a specific lot of boards they shipped us, we could see which work orders (Jobs in Epicor speak) had material issues of that lot of that part number. Then we’d find all the sub assemblies those sub-assy’s were used in.
We dont use S/N or lot tracking in the company that uses E10, but I’m pretty sure that when you issue serial or lot controlled materials, you provide the lot or S/N for each one issued.
If your inventory of component A has two lots, you’ll need to specify the qty from each lot, during material issues. And the sytem will keep track of how many you have of each lot, so it won’t let you issue 110 pc’s from a lot that was originally received as 100 pcs.
Are your Reference Designators in the JobMtlRefDes table? If so, you could create a UD field and populate it via Job Entry or an Updatable Dashboard. Further logic could populate it automatically if only one lot is used and the qty was completed. The problem with this approach is that we are assuming the same lot is used in the same Ref across all finished assemblies. If we need to track that level, then a UD table will be required.
there is no way “naturally” within E9 or E10 to track lot usage down to the Reference Designator. The system tracks lot usage down to the job level.
Where I used to work, we had a similar problem where we could not use “Split lots” (ie… two lots on the same job)… BUT there were also some times where we COULD use them, but if we did, and there was a failure, we stood the risk of calling all the parts made with the bad lot, even tough the part we made might have been made with a good one (since there was no way to distinguish them inside the lot).
So, our rule “typically” was: on high reliability, high risk parts (such as Pacemakers, Rocket controllers, etc), “No split lots”… we would make our jobs smaller so that each job held good lot integrity across the entire job. By the way, this lot integrity was also down to the Machine that the part was made on, as well as the operator who did the work. If the machine went down, we would conceivably split the job because it’s lot would have different variables.
Another way of looking at this is from the FOOD industry… if you make packaged salads using lettuce from multiple farms, and you mix all the lettuce together, and then ONE of those farms finds it has some bad lettuce that causes people to get sick, you (the packager) must throw away all the salad packages, because there is no way to differentiate the supply lots.
Tim - What if you split the component among several material lines in the BOM?
(Maggie - The following is in E10)
For example: A PCB assy (P/N ZZ-0003) has:
Setting up the BOM with the Caps on 2 seperate material lines:
Mtl 10 has designators R1, R2
Mtl 20 has designators C1
Mtl 30 has designators C2
When it comes time to issue parts, the caps show up as separate issue lines, each requiring a Lot Number
The Production detail shows the specific lots issued to the job.
One downside, is that it doesn’t look like you can display the Designator(s) on the Mass issue screen. At least not with just a personalization. Maybe a Customization would work.
You’d probably want the Job Traveler report to include the designators and Mtl Seq, so you knew which Mtl Seq was for which designators.
The Production Detail report doesn’t show designators either, and I’m not sure how hard it would be to include them.
