Hi All,
We are trying to find a solution that would allow us to move a “Bin” around the warehouse. This is because we are trying to use Planning Contracts (which requires you to receive and store inventory in a specific bin) however like every real warehouse we sometimes have a need to move this inventory around and so the idea of a portable bin was brought up.
There is a portable bin checkbox in Bin Maintenance but the help isn’t very helpful about how it works or what it does (or doesn’t do) any ideas? or pointers?
Goal would be to be able to “set” the location of said Bin somewhere and be able to change this as it moves around.
I have seen that “portable bin” flag for years, but I have personally never used it nor have I seen it used. I just looked up the online help and found that it SAYS it is used by Fulfillment Workbench (hmmm)… I would assume that you could also change the Zone, Aisle, Face, Elevation, or a UD Field on the Bin as well if you wanted so that you could keep track of “Where” the portable bin was located.
It looks to me like just an information attribute. I’ve tried setting and unsetting it and changing locations, yet there seems no change in behaviour.
If the transactions table had location fields and movements in location were tracked, it would be useful. Also, having the ability to change the location on only Portable bins would make sense.
I have not used it, but I have thought about it. So take it with a grain of salt.
I imagined a portable bin as a PCID. You set up a bin as portable (whether it be a cart or an actual small bin) and assign a PCID to it. You can now fill up the bin with whatever you want. Now the issue with this is that since the bin is portable, how do you find it? Ideally, you would have a RFID tag on it that you could use to find it in the site. Otherwise, you would need to walk around and scan all the portable bins on the floor until you found the one you were looking for. I don’t believe a portable bin can be in another bin. It just exists in the warehouse it was created in. Using PCID, you could determine an empty location.
That would be a a reusable PCID…When I was looking into PCID, I’m pretty sure the examples mentioned this. I suspect portable bin was an early attempt at this. If you have ELC the video is really useful.
For a quick result perhaps asking @RobertBrown or @markkaminsky, or @timshuwy perhaps a yammer post to clarify?
Our issue is we need to do Purchase Contracts and those require to be received to a specific bin…,. which throws a wrench into any normla warehouse nobody is going to stick everything on the same bin every time and keep it hthere.
But you are receiving to stock, if so you can receive to PCID.
When you mention they are “required to be received to a specific bin” can you give us a bit more detail around the business requirement. Are these parts on the purchase contract made to a specific specification i.e. MilSpec vs Std and that’s why they need to be in that bin?
Oops sorry, I’m tending to agree with @timshuwy on the portable bit and Fulfillment.
Your tying the Planning contract to the specific warehouse and bin so I can understand the dilemma. I’m assuming that you are not wanting to have the part in any other bin than this one. Perhaps the Outside field in the planning contract is what you need to change? Getting a bit far out of my wheelhouse now.
Anyone else out there that uses Planning Contracts that could throw some more light perhaps.
Right Planning Contract requires the parts to be in a specific bin (specified in the planning contract setup) the issue is that realistically we aren’t going to keep that material in one specific bin in the warehouse.
We have a few pallets of stuff and we need to move it around.
So what we need is a way to move that “BIN” and know where it physically is in the warehouse. But there doesn’t appear to be a way to do that.
I’m not sure why epicor implemented planning contracts with the target being a specific BIN. It would have been much better if the target had been a PCID
I think Planning Contracts were around before PCID so that’s probably the reason. Have you tried what happens if you changed the Outside value on the Planning contract and then moved the inventory to another bin? I’m curious. Particularly if you can move it to a bin not in the planning contract warehouse.
I’m also curious as to how those location fields behave when you check/uncheck portable.
if you wanted to track the pallet, then I can’t see why you couldn’t just use package control on top, probably a few extra steps, but you can apply a PCID on receipt, move by PCID and then a dashboard to track by planning contract. Everything stays in the PC bin, but in actual fact you know are tracking by PCID…sounds kinda convoluted I know.
Planning contracts use one bin for inventory. This will I think include anything that’s in a PCID. You can’t have a bunch of bins in a planning contract, (maybe that’s our solution, is to customize that). But if you have a like 50 pallets of stuff, you can’t physically fit them in a single bin location. Even if it was all on a single PCID, a PCID has a single bin location as well. Honestly, the planning contract things works very well except for the bin part of it. And that part makes it nearly unusable for most places.
What options do you have in the Outside drop down?
I’d look at that and try testing receiving (or inventory movement) to a different bin other than the one on the contract, when the Outside option is set to another value other than stop.
Using PCID is probably a bit of a sledge hammer approach if you are not using it already. So probably not a good suggestion.
That’s for moving stuff in and out of planning contract bins. You can lock it down if you don’t want people being able to add or remove things with just inventory moves into the bin.
Once you move stuff out of that bin, MRP treats it as a hole that needs to be filled. So you can’t receive it to that bin, and then move it out of that bin.
You mentioned this earlier, now you’ve explained it I can’t see any other way, you sort of need a way to have “sub bins or overflow bins” that don’t affect the Planning Contract or MRP.
Is there any MRP parameter to alter it’s behaviour for these Contracts/Warehouse/Bins?
Planning Contract Bins are a very specialized functionality that protects inventory from usage by other inventory needs. It is something like a “super allocation” in that any inventory that is purchased for a contract, and moves to the contract bin cannot be used by others.
I would also say that it was under-designed because sometimes it is not practical to store all the material for one contract in one bin… (I dont want to throw my Glass and Sheet metal into one bin just becuase it was purchased for one contract).
