I am trying to figure out exactly how the PO Suggestions work (basically the formula behind the number). I am starting with some very simple cases.
I cannot get the urgent lead time to be considered and cannot figure out why (unless that field is just for information and doesn’t actually get used – which would be weird). I created the following test cases (each one a different part and different sales order), all of which have a ship date of 10/31:
Part1, lead time 10, no urgent lead time (10 puts delivery on 11/8)
Part 2, lead time 10, urgent lead time 6 (6 puts delivery on 11/2)
Part 3, lead time 10, urgent lead time 3 (3 puts delivery on 10/30)
In all three cases, the system shows a due date of 11/8, the regular lead time. Under what circumstances does the system use the urgent lead time?
According to the MRP Tech reference the Urgent lead time is dependent on the Allow consumption of minimum qty in the plant setup.
Consume Minimum Quantity
Long lead times can cause some purchase order change requests to either never execute or generate excessive purchase order suggestions. You can correct these situations by using the Consume Minimum Quantity calculation.
When you activate this calculation, you cause both the MRP and PO Suggestion processes to use another level of lead time calculations. When certain supply conditions are met within the purchase lead time, an additional set of Urgent Planning parameters activate. These parameters use the Minimum Quantity available within inventory to satisfy demand while at the same time generate purchase orders suggestions that require more immediate resolution. If the projected On-Hand Quantity falls below the Safety Stock or a zero (0) quantity, the Urgent Planning parameters are used to calculate the purchase suggestion quantities.
We are on 10.0.7.4 - things may have changed in newer versions but anyway…
Even with the system configured as Greg mentioned you probably want to consider the short horizon planning fields on part plant - it has been a while since I looked at this as it works for us, but I’m pretty certain if horizon days is left as zero it stops the urgent po stuff triggering as well - I think it is as simple as if normal lead time is for example 5 days, set horizon days to 4 to make it trigger.
Additionally to prevent lots of noise on the buyer workbench you probably want to set the reschedule in delta field on the part plant screens as otherwise you will get lots and lots of po change suggestions making screens like time phase a nightmare for the average buyer to interpret and use.
If I remember correctly, if you don’t set this field, it also screws about with the urgent planning as if you have a PO for the same part already raised it suggests an expedite or quantity increase on the existing PO in the buyer workbench rather than firing an urgent po suggestion - that is my recollection of what it is does but it may be wrong.
One other thing, and it really depends on how clever/sophisticated that you want to get - the po suggestion screen isn’t very indicative of what is and is not an urgent po - if there are a lot of suggestions for a buyer they can easily get lost. To make things really simple we created a dummy vendor called URGENT and set this as the Urgent Planning vendor - ultimately for us all we need to know is that we haven’t left enough time to buy the material so as we can try and expedite so we use this to sort and filter- most likely we still buy from the default supplier - at the very least it tells you what is an urgent PO - if nothing else if you can use this when you test this to clearly see if it is working.
Also consider the receive time field on part plant planning tab as this impact on the urgent po process being triggered - again I’m a wee bit sketchy as it works for us but I think by default Epicor includes the required by in the lead time so will have purchased parts suggestions arriving the same day that they are required - if a part is required on Friday and today plus the standard lead time means it will be delivered on Friday,it will not show as urgent - really depends on your situation and how quickly purchased parts are received/processed- what would be the impact if the part arrives late afternoon the day it is required?
If you set the receive time flag to 1 it is planning to have the material there the day before and urgent po process will trigger if based on lead time etc that is not going to be possible.
Documentation on this is not great, including the field help and some of the fields are not obviously named or are named based on what they were originally used - we largely worked this out ourselves by trial and error and it works for us. There may be other ways of doing this.
We do have the Consume Minimum Qty flag checked. Will now see how short horizon planning fields influence this. I am trying to nail down the Urgent planning and then will move onto the other things.
Still got a suggestion for the regular vendor and lead time, even with the following parameters set:
Consume Minimum Quantity: checked
Short Horizon Planning, Horizon Days: 3
Urgent Planning Lead Time: 3
No inventory on hand
Sales order for 5 of the part. Ship by 11/1 (which is 4 days out, so after the short horizon).
Nothing else is set. I am trying to isolate what it takes to get the Urgent Planning info to be incorporated into PO suggestions.
Have sent off to Epicor. Will report back what they say.
We use the urgent planning parameters and have seen them work but it has been in conjunction with using the minimum on hand and safety stock parameters. I wonder if it only kicks in when using these variables.
This appears related to the reported Urgent Planning Problems-Pages enclosed below, the related SCRs are still open and targeted to be fixed in a future release.
SCR 209163 created. Targeted to be fixed on a future release. TBD.
Variant of SCR 124023. Target to be fixed on a future release. TBD.
I am looking at utilising urgent job planning but my testing and documentation I’ve read just relates urgent with quantities and not dates i.e. if Epicor sees we have demand against a part the next PO uses the urgent planning despite the fact the next demand comes from a job that allows the order to be filled using the normal lead time.
We would like to be able to see when an item’s leadtime impacts the job but we’re looking to lock POs
I do think that locking the urgent PO would probably help and seems reasonable if you do not think or want the quantity bumped up for a different demand. Otherwise I think days of supply will get system to add them together…
I have just discovered the Planning Workbench within Epicor which could meet our needs. Just wondering if there was a reason why that didn’t work for you and you had to implement the urgent vendor process?
