Purchasing for long operations

Epicor ERP 10
1

Have a scenario where the first operation on a job runs 24x7. The jobs are large and can take 4 to 8 weeks to complete. Each day, what’s produced from the first operation is sent to the next.

However, Epicor wants to purchase all the material for the first operation the moment it starts. My client wants to have PO releases feed it in blocks, perhaps weekly to cut down and cash flow and space costs.

They DON’T want to have to manually create a PO with releases. They Want MRP to somehow see the demand is not needed all at once for the start of the operation. They don’t want to break it down to smaller jobs.

Thoughts?

2

Have you looked at PO Contracts?

3

Got to love it when the bosses what everything automatic, but then when you ask for hard and fast rules so it can be automated, they say “it depends”

1 Like
4

“It’s exactly like last time, but just a little different.”

5

Exactly similar is the phrase around here.

6

Messing with MRP can be nightmarish.

However, messing with the PO creation process from New PO Suggestions might be doable. If it’s always the same part numbers that need to have multiple releases created, a “standard” quantity for each release for that part number, and a “standard” release rate (weekly or whatever), those values could be UD fields on the Part table… and then when a PO is created for that part a BPM could split it out.

At least that’s where I would start…

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7

Thanks all

8

I guess it depends how automatic you want it.

Level 1 a couple of UD fields on the PO and process and it spins off releases for the appropriate times.

Level 2 Automated PO releases of the back of the job, based on pieces per day throughput

9

But ‘level 2’ isn’t possible in the base software without customization, is it?

10

No, we would have to look at customisation for this one