Question

Schedule by "Ship By", but keep vision of "Need By" dates throughout schedule

  • 22 April 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 45 views
S

Hi,
I’ve done some searching, but not spotted anything that matches, so hope I’m not repeating anything here.

I run a system using long term customer schedules. Demand has a need by date and a ship by date, that is typically earlier. MRP backwards schedules to generate a job and material schedule based on these ship by dates, which all works fine and as we want it to.

If, (for instance) there is a delay in supply of material, the material and job dates will be forward scheduled from the date of the expected material supply, to give the ship by date by when we expect to supply the customer (now later than the need by date). MRP is still aligned and maintains the plan correctly, but visibility can be lost in the job and material schedule, of when things are needed to satisfy the need by date of the customer. The process relies on communication and manual maintenance of additional date fields at the moment, which is fallible and can mean the focus on improving dates is lost.

Does anyone know of any standard way to retain visibility of the need by date through the backed off job and material schedules?

I expect the calculation could be achieved through a BAQ and routine DMT, or BPM (if the overhead is worth it), but I’d like to know the inbuilt functionality is exhausted first.

Thanks
Sam

2 replies

mikeb

Sam,

I see two ways that you could keep references to the dates before they are changed.

We use Change Logs to store the changes, which shows the original data in the Ship By Dates (OrderRel.ReqDate) and Need By Dates (OrderRel.NeedByDate). There are links you can create between Change Logs and Orders, if you want to create reports for these, as well.

The second way would be to create a UD field and store the original value into that UD field for the first change. We do this on POs for original dates. You can then show the UD field in the UI for the end users. This would require a BPM to write the value.

We use a different, but similar system with the Ship By Date  and Need By Date. We use the Customer.DemandDeliveryDays to auto set the Ship By Date by the customer requested Need By Date, so ours would be rewritten each time a customer sends in an order. However, the change log will keep that value unless the Order Release gets deleted.

Michael Barsteika, TMF Center Inc.
S

Hi Michael,

Something I missed from my original post was that we’re planning with a make to stock methodology, so whilst the job and material supply will align to the demand, there’s not the direct link that make to order and job to job scheduling would give.

We currently have a BPM that populates PORel.Date01 with the first due date of a PO, at the point it is firmed from the suggestion.  This (in theory) is only changed when the Need By Date of the customer changes, but has to be manually managed by drilling through the BoM layers of the signal in time phase and recognising by eye, the customer demand that the material supply belongs to.  We also monitor changes with change logs, however, only as an investigation if someone notices the signal isn’t where it should be.

Our solution may be to put tighter controls around the changing of both PORel.Date01 and JobHead.RequiredDate, as these should both reflect the customer demand at the point of firming.

My question was really directed at whether there is any facility within Epicor to tie PORel.[DateField], and JobHead.RequiredDate, to that currently held on OrderRel.NeedByDate, but I suspect I’ve answered my own question… in that requires a MTO methodology, ratehr than MTS.

Thanks
Sam

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