We have some material that is ordered as rods, but inventoried and sold in mm. One rod equals 330mm in length.
When this material is used for a job, random lengths may be needed, say 28mm or 58mm.
Issue: We know the total mm that we have in stock, but we don’t know the total amount of full bars (those still 330mm in length). Could we use Multiple UOM to track that? If so, will the system automatically manage those remaining pieces (those less than 330mm) separately from full length pieces (those still 330mm)?
That’s a long standing problem for anything cut. Epicor doesn’t have anything that can do that. It would have to know which pieces you are taking something from to know if you are using a full piece, or a partial piece, and without customization, there isn’t anything input into the system to know that.
There are nesting softwares that will track pieces, but that’s usually with CNC cutting systems.
I believe this is what Advanced UOM sets out to achieve. I think the feature was developed for the lumber industry because as similar to your situation a 2x4 can be an number of lengths. I would contact Epicor if there isn’t someone here with knowledge of the module, it’s very new. You won’t have it on your current stated version. Robert Brown is the Epicor product manager for that module.
I don’t think it will keep of track of fractional (cut) uoms. It just gives you a conversion. If you always transact in the conversion you are fine, but if you cut off an arbitrary amount, it doesn’t know which piece you cut it from or that what is left. You would need serial or lot tracking to get the that level, and I don’t think they are going to force that.
One option I’ve seen used is to have two part numbers - one for full rods and one for partials. When a full rod is issued to a job and there a leftover piece, Job Receipt to Salvage is used to put the leftover into inventory in the partial part number and put into a bin just for partials.
Employees are then trained to first go to the partials bin, and if they cannot find the length they need, then they issue from the full rod bin.
Not elegant, but it can work. A minimum length to keep needs to be determined or a bunch of short unusable pieces can build up