There are several ways to handle these scenarios in Cetec ERP, both proactive and reactive, to support a dynamic manufacturing environment. Let’s use the following example to illustrate:
1 sheet of raw metal (RAWABC) can produce 10 units of finished product (SUB200). BOM Definition for Qty 1 of SUB200 RAWABC = 0.1 (qty per top) You receive an order for 8 units of SUB200.
Material handling The order is released to warehouse for 8 units of SUB200. This will alert the warehouse user to pick qty 0.8 sheets of material. It’s impossible to physically pull 0.8 units of material, so the warehouse user records an “overpick” of qty 1. Then, the material will be taken and cut for the order and the remainder put back into stock (via Dekitting).
Overbuilding If you want to go ahead and use the remaining 0.2 units of raw material to produce 2 additional units of SUB200, you’ll need to create a separate “build for stock” work order to process those items. In fact, if overbuilding product is a common scenario, you may want to consider processing ALL work orders as build for stock, and processing all sales orders as “stock” transactions, by which you pull finished goods in stock off the shelf to fulfill orders. That way you can overbuild if and when you need. Coming Soon! Cetec ERP will soon include a feature to let you receive finished product into stock on the fly from External ‘SA - Standard Assembly’ Customer Work Orders!
Here’s another variation of how to handle a similar situation: Top level assembly TLA12345 requires 7 units of “make item” SUB200 1 sheet of raw metal (RAWABC) can produce 10 units of finished product (SUB200). BOM Definition for Qty 1 of SUB200 RAWABC = 0.1 (qty per top) You receive an order for 1 units of TLA12345, which creates a suborder for qty 7 of SUB200.
The scenario fits exactly the models described above, with one exception. If you want to overbuild the SUB200 parts, i.e. to build all 10 SUB200 parts instead of the qty 7 required, make sure you manually edit the suborder qty from qty 7 up to qty 10.
Product Management This is the preventative, proactive solution that may assist some companies in planning and process control upstream from production. The basic premise for this method is that you already have metal pieces cut and in stock to satisfy the order for qty 7 metal pieces. The reason you already have them in stock is because those metal pieces have an ROP (re-order point) that is strategically set by product management and purchasing to drive the production of optimal levels of metal pieces to have on hand in order to fulfill customer demand. This essentially represents the attempt to get a better handle on the overbuilding your shop floor is able to get away with due to existing customer demand. The ultimate solution is to better model customer demand to drive ROP levels to drive strategic build-for-stock programs for the metal pieces.
Standard Packaging, Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ), and Excess Material Minimums Often in a job shop environment or custom manufacturing, strategic product management isn’t an option, and as a small business you may need to protect yourself against eating material cost due to this type of scenario. To address this, you can go to a part record and set Standard Package (i.e. material must be ordered in bundles of x many units) and MOQ (i.e. there must be at least x many units ordered). Any parts quoted with Standard Package or MOQ defined will publish an alert to the quote. Furthermore, when quoting a BOM, you can also define Excess Material Minimum values (which will be pulled from MOQ if it already exists on the part) and choose whether to eat cost or inflate the cost of the item.
For example, per the example at the very top of this FAQ, you could set the following parameters on the respective part records:
std pk. for SUB200 = 10 MOQ for SUB200 = 10
MOQ for RAWABC = 1 Excess Material Min for RAWABC = 1
Be sure to set the “quote_enforce_qty_min_mult” configuration option in Admin » Config Settings!