Re: Alternate BOM's -- BPCS-L

We also 4.05 CD and have similar intermittent situations.

We make copper wiring harnesses, in which many customers demand of us
shorter lead times than we are able to get from our raw material
suppliers.  Sometimes we run low on some stock component that is used more
heavily on some customer short lead time order than our safety stock
allowed for.  We usually find this out after the shop orders have started
production.  We ask the customer if it is Ok to substitute this other
component that is electrically the same, but priced different because of
the particular metal alloy.  If Ok with the customer, we then go into shop
order maintenance and change the bill of materials on the shop order (FMA
file) to use different component than what the BOM calls for (MBM
file).  It gets sticky if a production run has used some mixture of the
standard vs. substitute component.  There is the capability to make
substitutions during JIT600 but we not want our clerical people faced with
having to deal with this nuance.

The most cost effective way to make some parts is based on the quantity to
be made, because setup time for some machines is critical.  So there is a
flip flop going on ... use this method or that method and not decide until
a few minutes before shop orders to be launched ... you check out method
codes if that is your situation.

In routings, we can have status type 1 2 3 in which 3 is additional
description like notes
1 is normal 2 is alternative method

 From stand point of person launching the shop orders, ideally you want all
the different methods setup clearly in advance, with good labeling system,
so that they can launch the shop orders for a particular item according to
whichever production method is most appropriate to the reasons why we have
these different methods.

A variation on this is when we do repairs.  Basically we have some part
that a customer returns because they want it changed to a different
revision level, or there is an infinity of possible things they want done
to it.

>On 4.05CD, is there such a thing as an alternate bill of material?  My bills
>are simple - buy one, modify it and sell it.  However, for various reasons,
>we'd like to be able to substitute a different component once in a while -
>like 30% of the time.  Is there a way, without modifying the master-file
>BOM, to request/allocate a different component for a particular shop order?
>We're not running MRP - shop-floorf orders and scheduling are done manually.
>
>Thanks in advance - and my apologies if I'm asking a
>many-times-asked-but-ignored-by-me question.......

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Al Macintyre (macwheel99@sigecom.net via Eudora)
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