Production scheduling by sales order

[consultingguy]

I have a made-to-order scenario where sales order detail lines will create work orders. A single sales order usually has a few hundred work orders for finished goods and subassemblies. I'm looking at the JDE functionality for scheduling and capacity planning. Ideally I would like to schedule by sales order NOT work order because of the number of work orders. Based on my discussions with JDE and initial JDE functionality investigation, JDE only schedules by work order. If anyone has dealt with this type of situation, was it handled by the JDE software or a 3rd party one (which one) ? Thanks in advance.

 

[peterban]

Hi "consultingguy",
are you sure that you are in a make to order situation for all subassemblies ?

Last year myself and a collegue were faced with a similar situation. The client's BOM went through 5 stages with lots of subassemblies and full mixed mode (process and discrete) - and yes it was fun "!".

We found that the best was a sub-assembly made to stock, Kanban with only the final TWO stages being blown out directly from the SO in a pull/push fashion.

Hence SO = WO 1 = WO2 + packaging, testing etc
MRP/MPS.... WO2 = primary packed item
============== End stage 2 ======
MRP/MPS = WO 3 and so on

They also were trying to schedule by SO - but this removed the need for this.

I hope this gives you food for thought !!

Cheers

Peter

PS If you want I will ask the client to see if they will speak with your client about how we tackled this.....

 

[consultingguy]

Thanks for your response Peter

Yes, all the subassemblies are in a made-to-order situation and cannot be avoided. This topic was discussed a long time ago and again today.
A typical item entered in a sales order will create 1 work order for the finished good and 1 or 2 work orders for the subassemblies. The number of subassemblies for a item has been reduced as much as possible. A sales order with 50 items could create 100 to 150 work orders.

Consulting guy

 

[peterban]

Hi,
I take it that your really in a "whole order shipment" situation then.
The only solution I have heard of the "totally" accomodate this is to use constrained MFG - e.g. APS with an option of order promising. These are outside my areas of expertise.

I hope this helps a little and that you find some sensable answers.
If you do find any details - can you post them ?

Cheers

Peter

 

[Krofire.com]

I can only agree with Peter on this in that you may wish to look at APS. However, I do have a question - seems dumb, but HOW do you want the system to work? You want to Schedule by Sales Order. How would this work ideally? Do you want a constrained promise date to appear on the Sales Order during Sales Order add so you can give this promise date to the Customer?

A Sales Order is just a Customer Demand from which you apply a Promise date based upon your Manufacturing capacity. Sadly the ATP abilities of JDE are based upon the unconstrained, make-to-stock, scenario. Sales Orders have no constraint. Work Orders do. The only way to ties lots of Work Orders together is with the "Parent WO" field in the F4801. However, even then it won't do anything unless the promised "Project Planning" software is ever launched.

So, to return to my question... I guess you would like the Promise Date on the Sales Order to be generated based upon the Total Constraint upon your Manufacturing Facilities? As you found, JDE isn't designed that way. The nearest it gets is the Resource Requirements Planning system that uses a Resource Profile and Forecast. Even so, this system doesn't yield dates. It just lets you know how much machine and labour time you need. The APS offering is the only way to get constrained delivery dates upon WO's and Sales Orders.

When you say 'scheduling' - does this imply that you want to change the Promise Date on the Sales Order and have this change the Request Date on all the WO's? Effectively you can do that with MRP.