When our planning team is planning a job and hanging material, will Epicor see that we have raw material and hardware in stock to be used? I am trying to figure out where this is visible so that it can be issued or picked for a job and purchasing does not purchase more. I thought fulfillment workbench but it is a bit cumbersome and I am not sure if this is the right place. What is also happening is it seems purchasing is getting to it too quickly before parts can be issued. If Epicor sees that we have inventory to use, I would think it would automatically not tell purchasing not to purchase what we have in stock. Any help is appreciated.
Let’s start with Job Tracker and Time Phase, so we understand how you are setup.
Make direct and buy direct are things that align POs and Sales orders to jobs nicely, but a side effect is that they ignore on hand material because they have been told there material is coming direct to them.
Can you post an example so we can see if there are direct exceptions?
We do all buy to inventory and make to stock to avoid that.
If you are buy direct and want on hand to be considered then I run a calculation when a buyer’s workbench is opened to code the suggestion to guide the buyer for things like we have consigned material on hand that can be used rather than buy or an alternate part number has on hand stock, etc.
If you’re using MRP, there is a secondary process that can be run after MRP called “Production Planning Process” that updates the Production Planner Workbench… and that workbench will show, at the job level, which materials are in stock and which are Shortage.
It has some caveats, but can be a very useful tool for folks on the planning side.
We generated a dashboard based on the data from Multi Level Pegging, This dashboard uses 2 BAQs (Master - Detail)
Master contains Job information along with a couple calculated bool fields that indicate if the Job will be Late based on supply dates and if all the items are in stock and pegged to the job based on the information from the pegging tables.
Upon clicking a line on the master it shows all the materials used by the part with availability and Supply information.
This dashboard helps our planning team decide what jobs to release, no point in releasing a Job we don’t have materials for, at least for our specific process. They can also view if there is a PO suggestion from MRP, stock in DMR or Non Conformance.