All of our products are manufactured as make to order. Each product has a unique ID on a label (just a sequential number) which at the moment is not related to ERP Data.
Obviously, I want to change this.
Standard serial tracking wont work as it is based on part records that must exist, in our case the manufactured part number does not exist.
We have a framework of an idea whereby we user a UD field with a sequential count, print labels using bartender etc. but I was interested to know if anyone else has done something similar?
Or at least open the discussion here to see what ideas anyone here has.
In my first Vantage/Epicor implementation, we had a wildly configurable part. There was a small, medium, and large version: SM, MN, and LN. This was our base configured part and we enabled serial tracking on that part ID. This was also the part on the order and job. The details were built up in the Part Description as a “smart” part ID. In this way, we were able to assign serial numbers to each MTO part. All of these parts shared a single Serial Number Mask and counter.
I agree with Mark’s idea to use a “placeholder” part number that is serialized and put your details in the description. This will allow you to use the serial number tracker which is very useful, out of the box. We attach drawings and inspection reports and photos of rma’s to the serial number and the tracker shows those as well as every transaction done with that serial number. While we do use part master part numbers for sales, our repairs are based on a placeholder repair part number and details input in the description allow reports and dashboards that provide more info than solely this placeholder part number.
This is interesting. I agree the out of the box process is really feature rich and works well.
I think the concept suggested here would be to much of a huge change for the business, too much is relied upon based on the part number created as it is linked to the order and release.
That said, I am thinking that we could create a UD Field to store the part number, leaving the base part number alone and allowing serial tracking to work.
I can’t even begin to imaging how many dashboards / reports we would need to update to cater for this though
As I say, I do have a framework to do a simple solution using a bit of customisation, but it seems a shame to ignore all the standard functionality that is there.
I’m late to this party, but you said your “part number” is directly related to the Sales Order and Release… could the UD field(s) be on those tables, or even a separate UD child table? That might get you more flexibility, with probably the same amount of work that you’re already so “excited” about…
I wouldn’t say there was any excitement here. I always try to make sure that I am not missing an opportunity to use standard functionality before doing customisation, and this most definitely does not qualify as something that gets me excited
