RE: Phantoms.

Pierre, 

We are using BPCS 6.0.04. We use a lot of phantoms in our bills and due to
the way the system handles them we have made it a company policy NOT to
stock or build phantoms.  We use phantoms more for organizing our bills by
grouping certain items.  Our bills normally run between 300 to 500 items per
finished good.

For your question concerning the routing operations on phantom components: 
The structure of the phantom has to have the operation number to match the
routing of the higher level item.  You may set up your higher level routing
to have the first couple of operations represent the phantom process and
therefore reserve that operation number for phantom processes.  This way it
could use those operations for production of the phantom or the next higher
level - depending on your manufacturing requirements.  We are very strict
about our operation numbers representing certain processes that take place.
For example:
op 10 = phantom process
op 20 = 1st step of mfg process with or without phantom
op 30 = 2nd step of mfg process, etc.

If you do not have phantoms in stock you could use an alternate routing
starting with op 20.

For us the key to using phantoms was to designate routing operations to
processes no matter what the finished good item. That allows Engineering to
set the correct operation in the bill and Production to set the correct
routing to match.

For Example: If a finished item does not require op 20 then the routing
would be for op 10 & op 30, there would be no op 20 in the routing for that
item.

We have had several other issues with phantoms:
You have to be careful how you post material to shop orders with phantoms.
If a shop order is posted for less than the required quantity you must
manually update the issue quantity of the phantom and component items if
they are both on the shop order.  For example: The shop order is for 10
pieces.  You had 1 phantom on hand.  The shop order will list the phantom
requirement for 1 and the component requirements for the remaining 9.  If
you report on the shop order that you completed 5 of the parent item,
without manually updating the issue quantity on the components the system
will calculate it at 1/10 per or .5 of the phantom item and 9/10 per or 4.5
of the required quantity.  This is one of the reasons why we made it a
company policy NOT to stock phantoms.  It tends to mess with inventory if
you are not careful.

Also, when opening a shop order we have had problems were it will pull the
phantom inventory onto the shop order - even if that phantom is in a
different warehouse, (under the same facility).  For our application this
does not work since the warehouse locations may not physically make it
possible to use the phantom on-hand.  This was another reason NOT to stock
phantoms.

I hope this helps.

Beth A. Norris
Production Control Manager
Fawn Engineering
Des Moines, IA
bnorris@wittern.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: P.Deveau@bluelineinc.com [mailto:P.Deveau@bluelineinc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 9:46 AM
To: BPCS-L@midrange.com
Subject: Phantoms.


     Are they somebody have somes experiences with phantoms.
     I have finished good using a phantoms in it. I have specifics routing
on my Finished good.
     My phantom used Raw Material and have specifics operations to process
on it.
      I issued my Shop order on my finished good and used the BLOW-Thru.
     The Blow-thru work with my components. If I don't have phantoms in
stock, it will required the raw material.
     On the shop packet raw material will appear on it. But only operation
tied to my finished good will appear on my shop packet. Operation tied to
my phantom not appear on my shop packet. ( this is my problem).
     Operations must be on my phantom for costing reason and cannot be
duplicate finished good (for costing reason and if I have some phantoms in
stock my shop packet will not take care of it).
     Somebody can help me.


Pierre Deveau

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