Does anyone have experience with setting a minimum quantity on MRP’s transfer order suggestions? It’s currently generating them based on a just-in-time delivery model, but we’d like to set a minimum amount that needs to be on the transfer, similar to the Min Order Qty for POs. I’m not seeing anything in the help files or the MRP Tech Ref to that end.
Current behavior:
Part P-100 is only purchased at Plant A, and used in production at both Plant A and Plant B for a build-to-order product.
Plant B is set up to receive transfers of P-100 from Plant A.
Plant B has future demand which will cause inventory levels to drop below the specified minimum (e.g. 4 units next week, 2 units in two weeks, and 10 units in three weeks).
MRP runs nightly (regenerative) and creates transfer order suggestions for part P-100 from Plant A to Plant B to fulfill the demand and bring the stock level back to the minimum on a just-in-time delivery schedule (e.g. transfer quantities of 4 this week, 2 next week, and 10 in two weeks).
Desired behavior:
See points 1-3 above.
MRP runs nightly (regenerative) and creates a transfer order suggestion for part P-100 from Plant A to Plant B to fulfill the demand considering a minimum per transfer in the process (e.g. minimum transfer quantity of 3; transfer quantities of 6 this week, no transfer next week, and 12 in two weeks).
We did want the same thing (10.1.600) but couldn’t figure out how to get an MOQ. So… we now use SS and reorder to max variables. This works fairly well for us so that when we go under SS system asks for other plant to send us enough to take us to max. See screenshot:
We have discovered one bug with it, however, in that if we send the TO to take us back up to max and then more usage of part in receiving plant is done in interim before receipt, then we get extraneous suggestion to get to max. To alleviate this problem and train how to ignore this new TO suggestion, we added grid view of inventory parameters on the TO workbench per below and trained personnel not to firm additional TO suggestion if they see InTransit > 0.
I like this approach and it looks like it should always batch the transfers.
Just wondering - what would happen in a scenario when you have a large order to be fulfilled from a plant you transfer into that required a quantity greater than the Max On Hand? I imagine it’d be on someone’s radar and they’d handle it manually, but the suggestions might start to look a little wonky.
I also reached out to Epicor Support (because I like to get an official answer as well as find out what people are actually doing) and they directed me to the Multiple field in the Part > Sites > Planning > Lot Sizing section. It looks like it will work really well for what we’re trying to do. Since we’re dealing with quantity bearing purchased parts only, it acts as a batch quantity and dumps the extra into stock without extraneous jobs. We’ll still have to test it thoroughly, but I’m definitely keeping your process in mind if this doesn’t work out.
Hi Jason,
Wow ~ look at that! I guess this is what I get for avoiding calling Epicor support
The help file in my version really could be a bit more useful here… It says nothing about transfer orders and the field is called “manufacturing lot size multiple”, how’s that for clarity?
