Our BOMs include ~100 different parts, so when a new product gets released I’m being told it’s a major pain for our buyer to go in and open all ~100 parts up to update the min on hand. Seeing as though we are constantly releasing new products, our Buyer is asking for a better tool specifically if we could start DMTing in the min on hand.
I don’t see why we couldn’t use DMT, but it sounded to me like a big hammer so wanted to reach out to see what the recommendations are. Specifically I know some screens have a “list view” where it’s kind of like a spreadsheet where you can open multiple “things” and then easily edit them and save. Any suggestions for our Buyer?
You can use an updatable dashboard for this. Your buyer could run the dashboard, export everything to Excel and update, then either use the Actions > Uptake from Excel or right-click > Paste Update functions to “mass upload” the new minimums.
@embedded ,
What version of Epicor 10 are you on?
What is your Buyer’s method to calculate Min’s?
As @tsmith suggested you could use an updatable dashboard and probably even have the BAQ calculate the suggested Min’s per your calculation.
There may be another option that might work, that was released around 10.1, the Min Max Safety Mass Update program. It is located under Material Management > Inventory Management > General Operations.
Per Part Site or Part Class you can configure values that the Calculate Min/Max/Safety Values Process uses to determine new values. You can set the transaction History Window, the Safety Factor and Max Factor. Then by Part Class, the recommended values can be reviewed and either accepted, or changed in the Min Max Safety Mass Update program.
The ‘Inventory Management - Specialized Processing Course’ includes a nice Workshop on this topic.
Thanks everyone. Outside of developing something new(e.g. updateable dashboard) what is the most efficient way to update min on hand using standard tools? We want to start out by ensuring we’re not making this more complicated than it needs to be(e.g. open method tracker to see all the materials on the bom then open screen x to update min on hand, they are linked so as you click on a new material it will show up in screen x and you can enter the min on hand)… That is we don’t yet know how our buyer is updating min on hand, so I’ll swing by and check.
In regards to figuring out min on hand, we agree that is the more complicated part of the problem. Our buyer isn’t getting any feedback from Marketing and has pressured them that they have to give her something or else we’ll continue to have no materials on hand when orders start coming in… How do you set the min on hand? If I had a magic wand(I don’t have time to implement this now), I’d setup a bpm to look at 3 month average demand and compare to min on hand and then make suggestions to the buyer, or put the suggested min on hand in another field so the buyer can easily compare actual min on hand to suggested min on hand based on demand…
Under Part Maintenance / Part/ Sites /Detail pane.
But for mass update, DMT (if you have the tool available, if not Get it ASAP ) is the way to go.
But as an alternative a bit more complex, an updatable dashboard may be be something to offer to your buyer… should not take too long to produce, if DMT is not available.
Getting the updates in is the easy part of this problem. Figuring out what your min and max need to be is the harder part. But what information you gave above about how you would do it is not to hard to do with a BAQ. BAQ’s coupled with DMT is a very powerful tool, that is relatively easy to use. UBAQ’s can accomplish the same thing, and in the end can be more automated, but can be trickier to set up. DMT does the heavy lifting for you, you just have to do some copy paste.
I don’t think you mean BPM, really just a BAQ & a dashboard could accomplish showing the 3 month average and that would be very easy to do and deploy. And then your buyer could review your dashboard and manually set each part.
But this would be very close to using the built in Min Max Safety Mass Update program which very easy to setup and use, if you are on a version that has it. What version are you on? I have demonstrated this to my client’s buyers and they love it, it makes their job very easy.
How about using the base program that recalculates a new Min/Max/Safety stock value for all parts based on usage… this feature has been in epicor for a while now. You calculate, and then you can review and accept the results OR you can edit them. No custom required… it is all there.