We have been asked to review Epicor for one of our locations that manufacturers batch chemicals for specific applications. Instead of using widgets, they have drums of materials and have specific needs around UOMs and lot tracking. Our other companies manufacturer widgets so it’s fairly straight forward setup. Any suggestions on using Epicor for process manufacturing / batch manufacturing where it’s similar to a recipe for baking?
My company makes plastic film.
I probably can’t blather on about best processes or advice, but I can probably answer specific questions.
We are using Epicor for Contract Manufacturing using formulations. Our management did not utilize UOM functionality on our old ERP (everything was in lbs., ignoring specific gravity, which differs for various materials) - so they also elected not to use UOM functionality going forward. We have two UOMs, LB and EA, everything is handled with those. To me, this throws the batch size calculations off too much, but management seems to be happy just over-producing by 10% to account for losses etc.
We haven’t gone live yet due to our technical debt - the old ERP was never configured correctly from step 1, so there are unique part numbers per-vendor when they should be per-chemical. Our formulas are all set up around the vendor-specific part numbering system, and Lab is in the process of making them sane. The compounding instructions are also not in a sane state (written in excel, by an employee who doesn’t know excel, so she typed into each cell separately to format the thing… and referenced the vendor specific item codes… lots of fun)
Thank you for your feedback.
Our team in that office is concerned about UOMs. They typically work in both volume and weight units interchangeably depending on the conversation and reference both on everything so density is important. They also do a lot of development so have test coating packages setup in their current (not Epicor) system. Epicor has tried to explain we can do much of this with advanced UOMs or revision specific methods / MRP or product configurator. Can do and is practical solution for real world application are two different things sometimes. Have you looked at either of these options?
Advanced UOM should be able to handle whatever you throw at it. As long as you can define and calculate your conversions, it will work.
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Setting up UOMs can be a pain, but once done correctly, everything just flows on through.
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Just jumping on the back of this comment
I use lengths of tube, and we cut to different sizes depending on the size of pannel we are making… do you have to restructure your BOM’s to accomodate UOM or can you define it in the part master detail and it do the conversion for you? and once its converted this for you, can you co-part automatically the off cuts?
Depends. Not knowing how your system is currently set up makes this very hard to answer.
For something that is only length, AUOM might be overkill due to the price of the module. But yes, you would have to change “some” part of your BOM or BOO and would probably need all new part numbers. If by “co-parts” you mean remnants; no, it will not automate that. What it will allow you to do is return the material to stock at the length it is. If you mean actual co-parts, that is a different module.
The main benefit of AUOM is it’s ability to track dimensional inventory. We are a sheet metal manufacturer and one thing that has always plagued the industry is knowing what you actually have in stock. The L x W (area) of the material is what is important. Up until AUOM, there has been no way to actually track inventory down to L x W. As an example, a part may require 100 sqin to be made. While you can set up Epicor to track area in stock, that actually does nothing for us as what is actually needed is a 10 x 10 piece of metal. The system could say that there is 100 sqin in stock, but that is a cut size of 20 x 5. So, the AUOM allows us to break our inventory and material down to another level. We actually store our inventory in eaches now as we can know the cut sizes with AUOM. We have 10 pieces of metal in stock and we add the attributes so we know the L and W of each individual piece.
AUOM is a god send for sheet metal shops and I am sure there are other industries where this would be immensely helpful. At the end of the day, if you know what you need to solve your business problem and the current UOM does not meet your needs, checking out AUOM can’t hurt.
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I can see how it would be helpful for sheet metal.
Where I struggle with it is how it can be helpful for mixing powders and liquids. The business area that this relates to purchases some things in powders so you would use weight and other items in liquids so you would use volume. Their end result is a liquid typically in a drum. It just seems to be overkill for this application. They do have subassembly items that go into the final product and are looking for ratios of materials.
For our other business areas that are live on Epicor already, we use phantom BOMs for this application since the other companies are supplied by the one not on Epicor.
I do not think it would be good for recipes. However, Epicor does now have a Recipe module that sounds perfect for that use case.
Do you know what it is called? Through our research we ran across Tropos but either its not available in the US or not a thing anymore, it’s hard to tell…
I believe it is called the Recipe Managment Module, but I am not positive. I would contact your CAM.
I believe it was just released last year.
Thank you. I will reach out to my CAM.