Re: Phantoms. -- BPCS-L

> From: P.Deveau@bluelineinc.com
>  
>       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

I think it might be constructive if you were to describe the task that you 
want to accomplsh for which you are using phantoms in this way, because it 
might be a case of having found the wrong tool ... like you using a hammer 
when you really need a screw driver.

It seems to me that your problem is that BPCS phantoms are designed to work 
right but you want them to work a different way.  Have you read the BPCS 
documentation on phantoms?

We have used phantoms in other ERP before we came to BPCS & conceptually they 
worked the same way as in BPCS, which leads me to suspect that there is an 
ERP standard out there.  Have you read what APICS has to say on the function 
of phantoms?

In MAPICS before we were on BPCS, that ERP did not handle as many decimal 
places as BPCS, although MAPICS was mathematically compliant, while BPCS is 
not ... ie. you could trust the results of mathematics in MAPICS.

At the time, we were tracking carton consumption ... now we use a reorder 
point visual approach like office supplies ... and we had customers that 
would say something like please put 1500 items in one carton, but we could 
not put 1/1500 of a carton in our BOM because MAPICS BOM did not go to that 
many decimal places, so we had a phantom that was 1/100 of a carton & got the 
math to come out right that way.

Today in BPCS we primarily use phantoms as a visual extension of notes.
When someone is looking at BOM of some end item, there are phantoms there 
with part # prefixes of EC for engineering change history ... so folks can 
see at a glance on any BOM related inquiry or report what the history of 
engineering changes is on this item.

99% of our manufactured items have both BOM & Routings
This goes several levels BOM deep
All of our routings have additional description lines
This information directs shop floor in part making
Many kinds of items have notes

Now that David says the midrange dot com archive server is back up again, you 
might check BPCS-L archives.  Seems to me there was a discussion some time 
ago about (put this in the search engine) "Costing Bills" meaning BOM for 
purposes of costing instead of for purposes of manufacturing, and also 
discussions on "method codes."  I am just here trying to direct you to the 
notion that BPCS is a tool box with many specialized tools, some of which may 
be more appropriate to what you trying to accomplish than by using phantoms.

How did you get your phantoms into inventory stock in the first place?
Are you supposed to ever have any quantity of them other than zero?

Beth A. Norris's post described scenarios with phantoms in stock indicating 
to me a category of possibilities I had not realized existed.  She also 
mentioned challenges with different warehouses in the same facility.  We also 
have several warehouses per facility, but our version of BPCS only supports 
one warehouse for production, so we have a program we run immediately before 
MRP to make sure our files are properly populated with the warehouse where 
the material is to be moved based on how we use different warehouses in 
production.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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