Distribution, Manufacturing, and Internet Modules

[acgolf]

I have spent some time poking around the help menu and it looks like the "Material Requirements Planning" menu seems to offer a report that would tell me which materials need to be re-ordered at a specified min level. We have MAS 200 ver. 4.30.0.21 and I have found the min level entry fields and I have selected the economic re-order method. My issue is this: I have not been able to find the “Material Requirements Planning” menu.  I’m not even sure if we have this menu available. Does anyone know where this menu is or how to tell if we have it?

Thanks,

A.C.

Coastal Brewing Co

Dover, DE

[SPyle]

You should specify whether you refering to Bill of Materials or Inventory Management modules? 

I'm a distributor,  not a manufacturer; I only use the inventory module for material management so I'll address that for you.

In inventory management, we don't use economic order quantity because that may not fulfill your requirements.  If you have a min set to 2, your inventory drops to 1, you have 5 as your economic quantity, it will prompt you to purchse 5.  If you put 10 on a sales order, the system will still only prompt you to purchase 5.  If you put 5 on a purchase order, the next time you run the reorder report , it will prompt you to purchase 5 more.  For this reason, we only use the reorder or max methods.  Our procedure is to allow non-stock items to be order to Max, with max set as zero.  Then, whatever goes on a sales order will be prompted to order the full SO quantity.  We set stock items to a reorder level with the method set to Reorder.  It accomplishes the same thing as if we set a max level, but allows us to distinguish between stock and non-stock at a glance and know that stocking was a deliberate action.

These are all identified then on the Purchase Order Reorder Report.

[skirmoochsage]

The PO Autoreorder selection or PO Auto Generate Orders Selection (the latter with the the drop box setting of Base Order Quantity On set to Reorder Quantity) may give you what you need. Material Requirements Planning is a separate module that may be more than you require for a distribution environment, but if your environment is a manufacturing setting, it could be an option.

[acgolf]

So if I understand corectly, in the PO AUTO GENERATE ORDER SELECTION I change BASE ORDER QUANTITY ON to REORDER QUANTITY. Then, I assume, I have to set a min reorder quantity under each item # in the QUNTITY ON HAND AND REORDER window. Which order method do I use ECONOMIC QUAN, MAXIMUM STOCK or REORDER POINT? Then which report do I print to show only materials that need to be reordered?

In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of a novice. Thanks for your help. 

[SPyle]

You don't have to do anything with the report except run it.

What appears on the report is based on the setting for each item in item maintenance on the reorder tab.  First, to make it work, the order quantities have to be greater than zero.  If you want to use Economic order quantity as the Reorder method, then the Economic order quantity must be greater than zero.  If you want to use the Reorder point quantity or the max quantity, the Min order quantity needs to be greater than zero.  If you don't do this, then they will NOT appear on the report as the system will calculate the "required" quantity to be zero, and therefore not print it.  (It is a shortcoming that these default to zero, but I've reported and complained about it for 10 years, and have had to pay a master developer to fix the code to create a default record with these values.)

For the remainer of the functionality, read the help screens or my post above.

[skirmoochsage]

SPyle, I'm really interested in your comment of a default value for the reorder quantities/methods; it sounds like a very interesting enhancement. I couldn't find an outstanding enhancement request. Can you give me a business case/suggestion for how you think this should work, and I can make sure there is at least an enhancement request created for your issue? If you'd rather submit the enhancement request yourself, you can enter it using the Product Feedback link that appears at the top of the page.

Thank you for your suggestion!

[SPyle]

It is a pretty simple mod, my MD programs it in about 10 minutes.  And now that we are on 4.x I shouldn't have to have this mod programmed again.  I think he just calls a short sub-routine during the inventory create and inventory copy process.  It is executed during inventory maintenance and also so/po create on the fly.  (We do a lot of these, and you cannot create the warehouse record on the fly.)

When a new item is entered or copied, a warehouse record is created for warehouse "000".  The record is created for a default type of "M" (order to max), with quantities set as follows:

Econ Order Qty  is left at 0  (this method does nothing for me for reasons stated above)

Reorder Point Qty is 0

Miniumu Order Qty is 1

Max on Hand is 0.

This results in anything being placed on a sales order showing up to reorder the quantity necessary to fill the order, but leave the stock level at zero. 

This doesn't create a warehouse record automatically when other warehouse records are created (such as an inventory receipt), so we get a business alert twice daily if there is a warehouse record with method "E" or min qty equals 0.

It has become frustrating that writing the enhancements take longer than the fix itself.  I know you have to go through your documentation processes, but I've yet to see any of my needs addressed through the enhancement process.  (I found this to be true during controlled release also.)

Hope this helps.

[vtsmike]

The default method of 'economic' is a shortcoming, likewise for 10 years been dealing with this. It effects us because b/o's do not get reported to re-order. So, I periodically run a VI job that exports all reorder records, I sort on field for economic method, and then run VI to import them back in as max method. Not as thorough as Steve's code change, but for our needs it works.

I just upgraded to 4.5 and it still defaults to economic - what a bummer.

[SPyle]

You can just do a custom lookup now, have purchasing or inventory clerk check daily.  Same for the vendor field blank.

I also have BAs that runs a couple times per day just incase something slips through, since purchasing is an ongoing process for us.

[skirmoochsage]

vtsmike, you know it seems that it would be pretty cool if a default reorder method could be set, perhaps by Product Line. If you haven't already, and have a free moment to submit an enhancement request, we'd like to hear from you.

Your fellow forum contributors can vote on it too.