Re: WIP Tracking

We are 405 CD BPCS on AS/400 mixed mode with most BPCS applications, although 
some of them not doing a super good job - I am not sure if I understand the 
question but I will try.

It seems to me that different people define WIP different ways, so we need to 
be careful that we are talking about the same stuff.  
At physical inventory time, WIP is parts in production between discrete 
sub-assemblies that have item #s, a very narrow perspective compared to the 
others.
For some people, WIP is all $ invested in sub-assemblies that lie somewhere 
between raw materials & finished products ready to be shipped, where 
quantities are irrelevant.  
On some reports, WIP is grand total quantity requirements of shop orders that 
have been launched, irrespective of any reporting against them so $ is 
irrelevant, 
while some people want to see how far along we are on fulfilling customer 
expectations, so that if there are any delays they get communicated to right 
people in a timely manner.
We have added some reports where WIP is expressed not in quantities or $ but 
in hours left to get the tasks completed & how close we are to the deadlines.

I do not see that it matters how the shop orders are created ... we create 
ours more than one way ... what matters is the reporting of labor & inventory 
against the shop orders & the degree to which that reporting is granular by 
warehouse & sub-categories & what kind of analysis we do with respect to 
variances between standards vs. actual reporting, & who is able to access how 
much of this data mining, & our policies with respect to people mucking with 
the data outside of BPCS audit trails.  We have consigned parts where a 
customer supplies us with some raw materials.  We make some of our own raw 
materials at other facilities.

You said non-standard components ... we sometimes have substitutions ... we 
are supposed to use this copper part but we have a shortage & lead time 
problem, so we ask the customer for permission to use this copper tin alloy 
that is more expensive but same electrical properties & we will pick up the 
financial difference.  The shop order says to use the copper part & we have 
already made some with it but the rest will be made with the copper tin part, 
so we do maintenance on the shop order to say what we are going to do, so 
that subsequent JIT6 will consume the substitution component.

We do have a problem with the fact that BPCS thinks a shop order is ready for 
purge when all labor needed has been reported at final operation, before all 
our inventory transactions have been done, and we do have some scenarios in 
which we want to report labor & inventory separately.

We had to make a modification regarding default warehouses for shop orders.
BPCS 405 CD only supports one default warehouse per facility.
We are using one each for finished parts & their final production, WIP prior 
to final assembly, raw materials, and rejects area.

I don't think my accounting management gives a hoot which warehouse the WIP 
is in ... their interest is in the $ value of different kinds of stuff by 
facility, and our GL accounts are organized by facility.  There is also the 
issue of inventory turns ... how much $ is tied up in raw material & WIP that 
has not yet made it into finished product to be shipped to a customer & what 
is the time frame between investing those $ & getting paid by the customer 
for it.

There was a thread here about inventory data to GL either summarized or 
detail.  If you do summary, then little or no support work needed to figure 
out how to organize the data, but you lose WIP cost granularity detail in the 
GL.  If you want detail, then you have to define the detail in your 
transactions, so that they will automatically feed into different GL areas, 
or else you are going to run out of Journal Batches before end fiscal month.

> From: CHatten@ftwayne.tokheim.com (Charlie Hatten/Wabash/Tokheim)

>  This is the first time I have ask a question so forgive me if I mess it up.
>  
>  We are implementing 6.1 full client server on an AS400.
>  
>  We have a situation where we have one facility with multiple warehouses and
>  each warehouse has it's own unique General Ledger account.  We are using
>  the configurator to create an end item which has parts coming from the
>  different warehouses.  Some of the items being supplied are non stock
>  subassemblies being assembled into the configured item.
>  
>  Does anyone have experience with how to issue material and labor to the
>  configured item shop order from multiple warehouses with unique GL
>  accounts?  The main emphasis being on WIP.
>  
>  If I would combine the GL accounts how can I track WIP by warehouse?  It
>  seems WIP in BPCS is at the shop order level only.
>  
>  Any help would be appreciated.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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