Inventory Item Length Problem

[murf]

I have a problem dealing with some inventory that we store as raw material in "bar lengths" of extruded uPVC, aluminium, etc.

These lengths exist as fixed amounts (e.g. 4m lengths, 6m lengths, etc) in raw materials, but once consumed (either to a works order or manually) we are usually left with "over cuts" that we store in a sub-section of the manufacturing area.

In One World however, if we inquire on how much of the bar length we have, the system may tell us 4.6 lengths, but we do not know whether this is 4 whole lengths and a fraction or lots of small fractions that total 4.6 lengths......

If we set the primary unit of measure to be MT instead of Lengths, the problem is worse as the total can be shown as, say, 63 metres, and we really do not know how that collection of lengths is broken down.

Other than lot/serialisation of the "over cuts" area, is there a more elegant way of dealing with fixed lengths / sheets of material that is used to the nearest whole in manufacturing and then the by-product used later when applicable? Surely many other areas of industry face this, e.g. metal industry, other fabrication industries, etc.

please help.

 

[DSauve]

murf,

We are a manufacturing site that also uses "bar length" items, and have really wrestled with how to keep track of this. We currently just track the total lengths in OneWorld; however, by policy, we use up shorter pieces first, so the majority of our on-hand should be in full length pieces.

One other approach we had discussed before was keeping multiple locations for such items, with a separate location for each major length (e.g. 2', 5', 10'). So the primary location might be B40.010 for location B40, in 10' pieces, with secondary locations of B40.005 and B40.002 for 5' and 2' pieces, respectively. This would still show the total on-hand as a combination of all sizes, but you could look at item availability to see the quantity of different sizes on-hand.

 

[murf]

Don,

Thank you very much for the advice. I like the idea of the mutiple locations for the general variations in size and I'll put the idea forward.

As I mentioned, the alternative was to do full lot/serialisation but this would be too much of an overhead for the comparitive gains, so thanks again for another option to take to the table.

Murf.

 

[mjf]

Gavin

I suspect that what you really need is multiple units of measure in
inventory where you are able to record more than 1 unit of measure for an
item (eg kgs and metres). We sell meat products in which cartons are varying
weights. We record the number of cartons as well as the weight of each
carton. This is an in house development, but my understanding is that JDE is
releasing a first cut of the ability to store multiple units of measure in
B9. It may well be worth you making enquiries with them before embarking on
your own solution.

Regards

Marty Fleming
Business Analyst
Richmond Limited

Phone: +64 +6 8786464 Ext 8168
Fax : +64 +6 8780959
Email: mailto:[email protected]

OneWorld: Xe SP16.1
Database: Oracle 8i
Enterprise Server: Compaq Proliant 8500R W2K

 

[wsellers]

I have a scenario you may want to test.
We have "Drop Off" item numbers setup for some raw materials. We have the
drop off item in the BOM structure of a large item with a negative quantity
and the full RM in the BOM in whole quantity. This way we reduce inventory
on the whole size RM and increase inventory on the drop of RM. We then
utilize the drop RM to make small items from. With JDE you should also be
able to setup the drop off RM as a substitute to the whole length RM. This
way your machine operator could notify you when drop off is used in the
place of the whole RM. You could then substitute the drop off and close the
work order. This will generate a planning variance if you have a cost
difference between the whole RM and the drop off RM.

I'd envision setting the primary OUM on the whole RM to EA with a conversion
factor to FT or some other length measure. The component UOM would be set
to FT or some other length measure. The primary UOM of the drop off RM
would be FT or some other length measure.



Walt Sellers
Heil Environmental Industries, Ltd.
OW B733.2 SP10, Citrix, Windows NT TS2000, Oracle 8.1.6

 

[rekblad]

Do you know about segmented items?
For example I can have a product code that identifies a product (123 = "iron bar"), then add a segment for the length (123 01 where 01 means 1 meter, etc).

Converting from the original length to the new shorter length requires some sort of a reclassification process. Something like creating a work order to cut the original length (say 123 10) into a 123 04 and a 123 06). Maybe some way to get a by-product out of a regular product BoM???.

Basically you create a template (P410014) to identify the segment(s) -- in this case just 1 segment with 2 bytes to id the length. Then apply it in the P4101 (see default tab in processing options) to create a series of new item numbers including the segment. So you would create 123 01; 123 02, for example.
Use P41206 to see availability without the segment (similar to what you get using the UoM = MT). This is why you want to use the sgementing functionality rather than just creating a bunch of new item numbers.