Help! I am not even sure where to begin. I think most of these questions are from an operational standpoint, not necessarily technical.
First, let me explain that my company hasn’t had a clear vision (or path) of implementing E10 for our production. That said, a lot of the system is untouched, or hastily configured. Being that I have only 4 months exposure to E10 – I don’t even know where to begin.
One very huge thing that starts off simple is MES on the production floor. In it’s simplest form, MES will allow a user to log in, enter a job, assembly, and operation then report product before logging out. No problem there. Here’s where it get’s tricky.
My boss does not want a Job Traveler! He says it’s 1980’s and I don’t disagree but I don’t know how to get around it. MES wants those values (job, assy, op). I am a developer and have no technical issues going in and linking tables and writing custom code to handle special situations but I have to have some sort of reference.
For example - IF I knew that a certain employee was assigned to a job – I could work with that. I imagine that you would slap them on an operation as a resource within the job. The problem is, how do I know to pull the emp from THAT operation – there could be several operations. Also, at some point that system will fail when an EMP who is assigned to a job doesn’t show up for work.
I guess I am looking for a way to automate as much of the ‘log in’ as possible from the employees perspective. Any thoughts to get the creative juices flowing?
There are ways to work without having a printed job traveler. Kanban
receipts, the work queue or working from printed reports. The job is still
the “vehicle” and still gets entered.
The more repetitive and/or lean you are in production the less the printed
traveler makes sense.
I have 0 experience in any ERP system - outside of solutions I wrote myself that is. My company is coming from E7->E9->E10 though. Historically, they’ve only every used the system for financials. I’ll note that we also have MATTEC.
I think the biggest concerns anyone has about job travelers/printed reports are:
They are easy to lose
They randomly accumulate around the production floor which can cause confusion when outdated papers are used
I dont know the details but I envision this (feel free to slap me if I’m on the wrong track):
All employees have an employee ID account
All employees are somehow defined as a resource
All jobs MUST have an employee resource assigned to them,
When an employee clocks into MES - I can query jobs within a time window (1st shift for example 7-4) then find the one that has a resource that matches my employee ID.
Like I mentioned before - I am not sure how to handle the issue of multiple assemblies/operations. Also, can a resource be directly defined/linked to an employee or will I have to do some trickery? I’ll have to have a backup method for when a scheduled employee cant work on their designated job and some other person has to do it. That being the case - what does that do to the resource - for example I dont know the logic of a resource. Will a job not complete if I dont give it the resource it says it needs.
I am firm believer in RTFM (read the f’n manual) but there are just so many I dont even know where to start.
It sounds like you either need someone inside with a strong mfg background
to navigate your new processes or you may need consulting help to get there.
You need to evaluate this with your upgrade project team.
There is a tab on the MES screen called “Work Queue”. That is the
electronic listing of all the job travelers that have been released. The
production user can be pre-assigned the work, or they may pick from the
queue and assign it themselves. You may need the Advanced Material
Management module to access it, but that keeps all the paper off the floor.
Check to see if you can access it.
Excellent! Thanks for that tip - we do have AMM so I’m going to check that out!
Looking at it - I am confused about what I am seeing. The resource I expected has nothing, but another resource DirectLabor has a ton - but all under CurrentWork and (1)Active that I’m logged into, none in Available , or Expected.
I guess I’ll have to scrounge up the manual for AMM so I can figure out what Available and Expected mean