What Epicor calls “Min Order Qty” (MOQ) seems to function more like what I would call a “Min Release Qty.” Some of the parts we buy would benefit from having a setting for both Min Order Qty and Min Release Qty. These are typically high-dollar parts and ones where the total PO qty dictates the supplier price.
PO Suggestions are generated in increments of the MOQ value, and if we have open PO release qtys for less than the MOQ, Epicor generates PO Suggestions to increase the release qtys.
For example, we buy 30,000 switches per year. A total PO qty of 10,000 gives the best price, and that price applies whether we take 10 releases of 1,000 or 1 release of 10,000. To best balance inventory turns against overhead costs of each release (freight, receiving, inspection, stocking, invoice payment, etc) we schedule releases of 2,500.
We currently document these situations by putting comments in a UD “Buyer Info” field which serves as a catchall for any random information a buyer might need when they place an order. This usually works, but it seems like there should be a better way. As it stands, if the MOQ is set to 2,500, a buyer could place a PO for 2,500 and pay a much higher unit price. If it’s set to 10,000, a buyer might bring in all 10,000 at once and negatively impact inventory turns.
John,
Does this have any effect on Purchase Direct job materials?
We run into the same issues that Adam outlined above. If we use the same part in multiple places on a job (or across multiple jobs), and it is ‘Purchase Direct’, we get a PO Suggestion for every instance of that part on the job(s), and the quantity for each of those PO Suggestions is the ‘Minimum Order Qty’. This results in PO Suggestions that far exceed the quantity we want/need to order.
It should. Make sure you set your days of supply. I would ask my buyer but he is not in right now. Let me dig around a little as I think there is another setting somewhere that might be related.
purchase direct + Min Order quantity does have a challenge here… One question is “why are you purchasing direct”? Instead if you told the system to manage it at the inventory level, then this would not be a problem.
My buyer found this weird setting that I had never seen before that affected how releases were created for PO Suggestions. I could be imagining it, but I will ask him Monday.
Thanks John. I’ve tried varying all these but have been unable to come up with a combination of settings that does what we want (i.e. generates PO suggestions for releases of 2,500 with a total PO min of 10k).
Tried that, but it generates suggestions in increments of 10,000. In this case our goal is to have suggestions generated that effectively say to a buyer “Buy at least 10,000 total, but bring in releases of 2,500.”
I’m going to submit a ticket for this to see if the MOQ and Lot Sizing fields know how to play nice together. I tried every combination and could not get them to work.
The only thing you could do if you want, is to set the Multiple, Min Lot, and Max Lot to 2,500. This will at least get you suggestions in 2,500 increments. Then, you could put a note in the Purchasing comments of a 10,000 MOQ. That is the best I can come up with.
I appreciate your help John! That was my plan if I couldn’t find a way to get Epicor to generate PO suggestions just the way we wanted. Our “Buyer Info” UD field in Part Maint gets used regularly enough that it’s fairly reliable mechanism for making a buyer aware of something when they place the next order.
