Maintaining Inventory for a Cable Company

[beckket]

Looking for guidance on setting up Inventory for a Cable company.

1. The Cable company buys inventory in Reels, which consists of a certain number of Feet:

1 Reel = 150FT

2. When they install the cable, they install a certain number of Drops which could be of any Footage,
depending on where the Drop is to be made:

1 Drop = 50 FT, another time 1 Drop = 25 FT, another time 1 Drop = 300 FT

3. Need to setup Advance Sales Pricing which is based on the Number of Drops and the Footage.
At the time a Sales Order is placed, the Number of Drops is known, but the Footage is unknown.

If 1 Drop is made, up to 150FT, the price charged is $200
If 1 Drop is made, up to 225FT, the price charged is $190

If 2 - 15 Drops are made, up to 150FT, the price charged is $175
If 2 - 15 Drops are made, up to 225FT, the price charged is $155

In setting up Advance Pricing, are Drops the Quantity Break or is it Footage? If Drops are the Quantity Break, where is the Footage taken into consideration? Is the Footage component best handled through a User Defined Field, e.g. Line of Business, End Use, Price Code 1, 2, or 3, which is part of an Order Detail group.

4. What are the Priamry, Purchasing, and Pricing UOM?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[peterban]

Hi!

You purchase the cable in Reels so the Purchasing unit will be Reels.

I am assuming that if you can "link" the cable together if there is less
than the length required (e.g. two reels 75 feet on each can be made into a
drop of 150 feet). If this is true then the primary stocking unit will be
feet.

When the price is being calculated do you want it based on
1) Number of drops
2) Number of feet
3) Mixture of the two.
If the price is purely calculated on the number of drops then the pricing
unit will be drops. I guess there is a WO hidden in the back of this to
perform the actual work - so it would be a standard to actual variance for
feet usage (feet being the component unit on the bill)
If the price is calculated on the number of feet then the pricing unit will
be feet, with the same sort of WO variance calculation in the background
If it is a mixture then I think you will need an order level group (take
your pick from ones not currently used in your configuration) to work out
the price. This will be the Feet "level break" in the pricing structure to
give item/item group + drop/feet breaks to the price you want. This still
suffers from WO variance issues...
Alternatively you could set up some form of configured item - but this is
pretty much overkill for what you are asking for, but for the fact that it
would create/recreate a WO with the correct footage (if the rules were setup
right)

If you are going down the mixture/cfg route, then once you have the final
footage - change the order to reflect the actual. With the cfg route the
BoM will change (with the new values from the rules......). Otherwise I
think that you are in a variance accounting role for the footage.

After walking through this in this mail its probably worth while taking a
look at the configurator. Whichever route you go, since you don't have all
the info - you will not be able to issue a fully priced quote.

I hope this is food for thought, I am sure that other members of the group
may have different ideas. Let me know if you need any clarification.

Oh just as an afterthought - could you post how you consume the cable - e.g.
just a SO or do you use WO also.....!!

Best regards

Peter

Peter Bannister : [email protected]
1st Consulting Ltd : www.1stconsulting.biz
Mobile : +44-(0)7711-649358
Fax : +44-(0)7739-256227
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Product Specialist

 

[beckket]

Re: RE: Maintaining Inventory for a Cable Company

Hi Peter,

Thanks very much for your thorough response. In relation to your question, we will be using a SO to consume the cable. You are correct, we were intending to create a work order directly from the SO, using a line type "W".

A couple of things:

1. The pricing is multi-dimensional, in that it is a mixture of the # of drops and the Footage.
If we use Feet level breaks, we still have the difficulty of taking into account the # of Drops. I need to create level breaks on the # of Drops as well. For instance, if:

1 Drop & Up to 150 FT = $200
1 Drop & Up to 200 FT = $195
Thus, we'll need level breaks on Footage.

However,
1 Drop & Up to 150 FT = $200
2-11 Drops & Up to 150 FT = $175
But, we also need level breaks on Drops

To further complicate the issue, there is no linear relationship between Pricing and the # of Drops and/or Footage. We could potentially create different Drop Pricing Schedules, i.e. Pricing Schedule for 1 Drop, another Pricing Schedule for 2-11 Drops, and within these Schedules have quantity breaks on Footage.
This would require the user picking the appropriate Pricing Schedule at order entry, based on the # of Drops (shouldn't be difficult for user). Any other thoughts?

2. The corresponding Work Order is to contain the Est. Hours to conduct the Cable Drop. Although the configurator would be useful for this company, they haven't purchased it, so we are trying to make due without it. We were thinking of creating a BOM, as follows:

To do 1 Cable Drop, we require the following components:
Part X = 2 units
Part Y = 1 unit
Part Z = 3 units
Labour = 3.1 Hours

Can this be easily setup, so that when a user enters 1 Drop on the Sales Order, the components required default onto the Sales Order automatically and the Labour component is reflected on a Work Order? Note, based on your earlier response, that 1 Drop would be in entered in a User Defined Field, and be part of my Order Detail group to derive pricing, i.e. it isn't entered in my Quantity Ordered field.