Re: Purchasing & units of measure

e-mail from Al Macintyre - relative newcomer to BPCS/400 but almost 2 decades
of experience in manufacturing software applications

Andrew Murphy wrote

> Has anyone found or devised a means of identifying units of measure and
>  conversion factors at a facility level?
>  
>  If a common part is purchased globally from different vendors the
>  vendors often supply the product with different purchasing units of
>  measure and therefore different unit of measure conversion. 

Here is an idea you might want to play with.  In the mid 1980's Central was on
MAPICS, which does not have the decimal place flexibility of BPCS.  BOM only
went to 3 decimal places.  We were doing backflushing of inventory consumption
off of labor reporting & trying to account for every item.  Some of our
customers wanted small items packed like 2,500 to their cartons, so we created
a phantom sub-part of 1/500 of a carton & the inventory was correctly computed
on our consumption of cartons.  We got the idea thanks to discussion at a User
Group Meeting.

I am sure y"all will correct me if I am wrong but I believe that BOM is global
in BPCS with allowance for exceptions by Facility.

If the rules are different by Facility, you need BOM exceptions by Facility.
There could be a different version of the primary Unit of Measure by Facility,
at the purchasing level.

If you need to be ordering more than one vendor UOM for the same Facility, I
can't help you any more - I would look at where BOM supports variations.  Can
BOM have exceptions by warehouse or location that are logical for purposes of
these games but not real?  Can BPCS drive phantom requirements through
internal re-supply orders, in which the arrival of PO parts with different UOM
fill the RO's?  I am just throwing out some foolish ideas here, of
possibilities to explore.

If we were doing this at Central, we would consider do a modification.  We
would have OUR official UOM for Purchasing purposes by Facility.

PUR520 prints Purchase Orders - when it reaches a relevant combination of item
& vendor, add to the PO the converted needs in the vendor UOM but also show
our story.

I believe it is PUR550 that receives in purchased materials - same deal - when
input is a relevant combination of item & vendor, there would be a
modification, so that we receive into our UOM but audit trail shows both
stories.

When we pay the bill to the vendor, the paperwork there would also need to
show the vanilla & modified story.

Al Macintyre
Programmer learning BPCS 405, RPG III, DDS, CL & has lots to catch up on like
UIM SQL & what is REXX?
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