We have a Mori Seiki mill, with a linear pallet pool, & each pallet will hold (5) different parts. The center will mill each part consecutively, leading to roughly (1) of each part (each part a different job #) per day. This is great for a high mix of parts completed but leads to issues with scheduling as Epicor assumes a qty (20) job will be completed in (1) day when in reality it takes (20) days to complete.
We are exploring setting up the mill as a resource group & each pallet as a resource to track multiple jobs being run at once. However, we are still struggling to find a way to capture actual machining time along with creating that 24 hour downtime between each completed part.
Hi Anthony,
I am bumping this to see if there was a solution you have found. We have just made a downpayment for a pallet changing machine as well and will need to figure out scheduling. Our machine will not arrive until October but I am trying to plan ahead. My main sticking point now is that we want to run this machine “lights out”. This means there will be no operator present to tell the MES that we are switching from one pallet (job) to another. I do not want all 12 hours of “lights out” Burden hitting all 5 jobs, only the hours that the job is under the spindle. As of now we will rely on manually adjusting this every morning but that seems labor intensive and error prone.
I’m trying to figure out how to handle lights out machining, when there’s no physical operator. Do you guys have a pretend employee for labor hours? Is someone starting and stopping the labor in MES (or using Time & Expense Entry afterwards)? Or backflush? Qty only or Qty + Time?
I’m getting lots of questions from our cost accounting manager, and hope to provide some better answers.
So far I’m thinking running it with backflushed time based on qty, and using burden rate to cost it. Probably have an operator clock in/out for setup, but if it’s a few minutes, might not bother (ours is a CNC bending machine with a robot for sheetmetal).
I am in the process of testing out the Pallet Pool system now. Setup the machine as a Resource Group and each Pallet as a Resource. Still trying Use Estimates, QTY Only, etc. Our new machine is arriving next week.
As to our normal lights out process we created a “lights out employee” for each of our operators. Setup with zero dollar labor rate so that only burden hits the jobs. At the end of the day if they are going to do a run that night they will clock into the MES with their Lights Out login. In the morning when they arrive they will clock out the Lights Out and add a comment regarding runtime/quantity in the notes. The times are then adjusted in Time and Expense by a supervisor. This was really easy to set up and after a few mishaps the operators are doing a good job of recording their times for future adjustment.
Forgot to add that we also set up a Department for “lights out” which makes reporting on the unmanned operations easier.