Updating BOMS and Current Jobs - Best Practice

Epicor ERP 10
1

Hello All,

Does anyone have some guidance on how to go about changing BOMs and current jobs when a change request or deviation comes through.

For example, we need to update a primer in our paints. These paints are in many released jobs as well. Do you generally use the DMT tool, manual change, or something else? What is your routine and has it proven successful? Are there any problems with it?

Thanks in advance for any comments/feedback.

-Utah

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It’s a huge PITA. We manually make the changes on open jobs, reason being, every situation is different. I have some templates set up for change parts from manufactured assemblies to purchased materials, but that’s about it. Epicor is designed to have the jobs created with the effective dates on the revisions controlling the details (read, the changes are planned and known ahead of time). They don’t do the fixing real world problems very well, mostly because that’s just really hard to do.

We have some dashboards set up to help us find parts on jobs so we can make sure we have found everything as well as check for the appropriate changes. Also, our business model of engineer to order, and all of the parts on one job, with the BOM matching the CAD model hierarchy exactly make for a more complicated change process. If you have an MRP process which funnels parts into simpler jobs with consolidated quantities, it’s probably easier.

Anyways, I realize that doesn’t help you much… It’s just how we manage it.

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Thanks for the info, yeah we have been using DMT to do both job and method updates, but it always seems so cumbersome as if we aren’t supposed to do it that way. When I first started I had to do it manually, I.T. wouldn’t do a DMT for me.

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So I have a few rules (in my perfect word) regarding this that may help (Theme - “You cannot unboil the Spaghetti”)

  1. DO NOT FIRM JOBS until you need to… REASON: (assuming you are using MRP) Every day, the latest version of the BOM will be used to create the job. Therefore the jobs WHEN FIRMED will be correct. Definition of “NEED”: just enough time before so that you can print paperwork, and get ready to release.
  2. ONCE FIRMED, no changes are done to jobs, unless absolutely necessary. In other words, released jobs will be made using the old method. If you find a change was made and the job has no work against it yet, you can simply delete the job details and “get” them again.
  3. if the job is released with work against it, THEN you will need to do the modification manually, or with DMT.

Where I used to work it was NOT a perfect world… we had some jobs that were in manufacturing for over 30-60 days. This meant that there was an occasional BOM/Routing change half way through manufacturing… but “once you boil the spaghetti” you cannot unboil it. sometimes a BOM change will require parts to be scrapped, rework, new labor operations to fix things… so again, each job needs analyzed on a case by case basis.

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Tim, thanks for your feedback. Do you have a specific way you do the DMTs when you need to modify the jobs? Is there a correct order?

Also, in your second point, you said that if no work was done to the job we can delete the details and get them again. But what if there are purchase direct materials linked to a PO, can we still delete the details?

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No. That is one of the reasons that we went with planning contracts to decouple the job details. You will have to unlink the PO, delete details, get them again, then re-link the PO.

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