Have a customer that needs to track 11,000 individual dimensions (think length of tube down to 1/16th of an inch)
We tried actually adding these UOMs but Epicor crawls… Takes minutes to do anything open part, update parts etc… 7 days to load the part master via DMT.
Obviously this is not the answer… we’ve come up with a few other “clever” alternatives. (Lot tracking where the Lot Num is the Length being the current front runner but that’s super messy and gross)
Yes it would be only the length. So you are suggesting Serial Numbers as the Length? I’m not following there
They need to know the exact Length down to 1/16th of an inch of each piece of steel (same part number) in their warehouse…
No, serialize every piece as it comes in. Part X is 10ft and there is 1 in stock.
Job1 calls for 2 ft. 10 ft is issued and 8 ft are returned. Since everything is serialized, they all need the exact dimensions. So the next shipment of part X makes there be 2 serial numbers in stock, one at 8ft and one at 10.
The serial number is only a way to have the system individualize each piece.
It’s really overkill, but it depends on how important it is to the company.
Yes. The serial number would mean nothing other than individualizing the pieces. Depending on the part, you could even mark each piece with the serial number.
We are using a combination. Most of our product we only track in 300mm lengths from 600mm to 13.2m, although we do have another UOM class that has UOMs in 100mm increments. We use lot tracking and UOM tracking.
Packs of timber (i.e. each supplier provides us with a different pack number for each “bundle” of timber) so lot number = supplier pack number. We have another Lot which has a name of Loose we use when we break a pack/lot of a particular part/uom and we move it to that.
We are still in Pilot at the moment, but I can see where there is merit in having an individual SKU per length.
One of the big hurdles we have at the moment is that we have multiple suppliers for the same part and the packs of timber they send can have different numbers of pieces, this affects other things like weight and dimensions, not to mention the total qty on had as our base is Linear Meter.
Performace is “OK” but we have not really had people hammering it yet.
To be honest. That’s what I thought the part attributes are for. I know that would make for a lot of parts,but in real terms an object that might be the same material, and attributes, of one length is not really the same as another object same material and attributes and different length.
Perhaps you have all the separate skus, but use internal part cross reference if your part naming convention gets too messy. Given some thought would have to go into reporting if you are wanting to report on a specific part.
Yeah we thought about individual SKUs but remember that a 10 foot piece can be used for a 5 foot job if you cut it. So if a Job needs 10 feet then how do we make the job requirement in such a way that the 10 foot inventory is available (SKU) as well as 11, 12, 13, 6 etc… I guess anything can be an alternate part of if their length is higher… so we’d have Part SKU 1 INCH with 11K Alternate Parts? That would probably break Epicor too LMAO
What about the Advanced Materials ability to track fractions of a piece?
I’ve never used it (we don’t have it), but recall that it could be used for things like sheet metal sheets, wire or tubes, where you needed to know that you have 2 half sheets, as they could be used to make things that require less than half sheet each, but not for something needing a whole sheet.
lol yeah…