Currently I have the following situation: Suppose the production of 1 shirt uses 1 meter of fabric, however, to optimize raw materials, during actual production, when producing 1 shirt, 1 meter of fabric is used, but production 3 shirts only take 2 meters of fabric because of using leftover fabric from the previous finished product and minimizing material waste. So my question is, can Epicor handle this situation and if so, how should it be handled?
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Hmm, there are a lot of possibilities but Iâm not thinking of any super easy way to handle this out of the box.
Do you inventory the extra fabric scraps if its a 1 shirt job, or do they get thrown out?
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What do you mean by âhandleâ? What is the end goal of knowing 1 or 2 meters was used or not used? Estimating? Do you have a MOM/BOM for these Part #s and do you use the Configurator at all?
If I were doing this I would transact in an area UOM not a length UOM.
I discussed this scenario with a customer once, but didnât go any further than that, so I havenât actually tried it⊠but THEORETICALLY it should be possible.
Anybody else out there feel free to poke holes in this!
Essentially, a Data Directive on the JobMtl table with condition(s) to restrict it to firing only ONCE for MtlPartNum = shirt fabric. Capture the main assembly part number, and look to a table for the formula defining the ratio of fabric needed to main assembly quantity, replace the QtyPer with results of the calculation.
If the formula is straightforward, this wonât be too terrible. The wonkier the formula gets, or the more different formulas required for different shirts, the more terrible it becomes.
And at some point, this will be too much for MRP to handle and MRP will probably time out.
We have a similar issue, we burn materials out of a stock sheet and sometimes the remainders are usable and sometimes they are not. The BOM for the parts just calls for the material actually used in the part, and I manually scrap the amount that was rendered unusable.
This works for us as we are low volume high value, and we want the scrap generalized and not put on any one part/job. I imagine shirts would be so high volume a manual process isnât feasible.
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Yes, Let me clarify my question a little further. I want to know if there is any way I can define the MOM for these parts to minimize the total scrap after production. And I also find some suggestion in the comment so I will give it a try. Thank you 
Set the fabric requirements to .66 meters per, and set a lot multiple 3 in Part>Site>Planning. If MRP is being used it would only suggest jobs in multiples of 3.
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What I mean is like this: According to the formula, 1 m of fabric will produce 1 shirt, in theory 2 m of fabric will produce 2 shirts, but in reality when producing large quantities it can You can use the remaining fabric to produce more shirts (illustrated below). So how can I config the MOM or anyway to control the scrap as realistic as possible
You arenât consuming a linear quantity, you are consuming an area quantity.
Transacting this fabric part in an area UOM would get you closer to realistic.
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Not wanting to sound ignorant, but is this something to do with the Scrap Quantity factor?
Nice picture by the way.
I think you either have to adjust your average material used per shirt, and do multiple shirts in a batch to obtain the minimalization level youâd like (as @zwilli526 mentioned).
Or, as it seems to me, there is an equation that can be established and used in the BOM rules. You mentioned a formula already, so I have to assume youâve thought along these lines already. I suspect the formula is somewhat âlinearâ instead of polynomial or logarithmic, something along the lines of
When Qty = 1, then 1 Sq Meter, else (Size of Shirt) x (Area/Size factor) x (Qty to produce)
Where the Size factor adjusts the amount of fabric required per shirt based on the size. XXL shorts take a lot more fabric than Small shirts.
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Do you have nesting software that can give you the material needed for X shirts?
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