RE: Backflushed Location Headaches -- BPCS-L

Al Mac is 405 CD now ... was BPCS on S/36 for many years Sometimes it runs together in my head how BPCS behaved different on which release.

Basically the allocations of inventory to be consumed from what warehouse and location, this aspect of BPCS software lacks the granularity of control that is desired by many companies. This is an area where some of the 3rd party vendor add-on solutions might find a potential market.

BPCS does not care what the human significance is of various locations ... it just grabs inventory from next alphabetically named location that has enough inventory to meet needs of current transaction. Off-topic for me to share Robotic Laws that Isaac Asimov got wrong, where BPCS same pattern.

Our locations are named after the customers for whom the final product is to be delivered. That's in reality. In BPCS we have to use a different naming convention because of BPCS inadequacies.

We want to have enforceable rules what inventory is to be consumed where, but often BPCS does not care about our rules, it just grabs the inventory wherever it can find it, sometimes driving some fields negative, and sometimes not able to handle all files in sync, so we end up having to do reorgs not because of anything any human did wrong.

In the absence of BPCS ability to adhere to our rules, we have to map out all files that contain whatever rules BPCS is really obeying, such as contents of ELA file, allocations of relevant orders, and how they get that way such as from MRP planning files, then at some strategic point in the processing of those files, such as labor reporting, impose our changes to the BPCS rules, with the rules of our company, sometimes with modification programs into BPCS job-streams, sometimes with instructions to end users of an extra step to follow when releasing orders, and also we have to know how to cope when users miss that step.

We have had massive modifications to this area, very poorly documented, because most of them arrived during a Y2K conversion that had us drowning in glitches needing fixing ... typically 50 glitches a week to be fixed.

God forbid that we ever have to go through this process again, if the rules of our company evolve.

Our finished goods end up in warehouse 21 for factory # 2, warehouse 41 for factory # 4 etc. so named because "1" is item type "1". Our WIP is in warehouse 22 42 etc. because "2" is item type "2". Our raw materials and sub-assemblies are correctly consumed from the *2 WIP warehouses, while the FG correctly received into the *1 warehouse.

We do not use lot control. Sounds to me like you want to explore whether BPCS will let you use lot control ONLY on the items that need this greater granularity, without messing you up with the rest of your production.

Dave Parnin wrote:

Paul,

Thanks for the reply.  I've worked with 4.05CD before at a place that I
used to work at although it's been awhile since I've dealt with material
planning, backflushing, shop orders, etc.  The shop orders for both the
kits and the component FG parts are going to warehouse 21.  The actual
location names are DWIP and FGDI.  When the FG components are produced we
want their components to backflush from DWIP.  When the kits are assembled
we want them to backflush from FGDI.

There is no ILM default location set for warehouse 21.  There is also no
default location assigned in the Item Master for either the FG or kit
parts.  Is it just backflushing the kits from the first location that it
finds for warehouse 21?  The IWI default location for the kit part is FGDI
and the Default/Forced location flag is set to zero.  Does this give you a
better picture?


Dave Parnin
Nishikawa Standard Company
Topeka, IN  46571
daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Paul LaFlamme

Hi Dave,

We're on 405CD, very similar to what you're running. I have a couple of
questions: What warehouse are your FG item shop orders issued to? The
warehouse the shop order is "cut" to will be the warehouse location the
components are allocated to for later backflush and it has precedence
over any item master, facility or system parameter default.

My next question is To what warehouse is the kitted item being issued?

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From:  David A Parnin

Greetings everyone,

I've got a situation where one of our facilities is starting to make
"kits" that consist of two finished good parts.  The two finished good
parts will also continue to be stocked and sold as individual items.
When these two parts are produced their production is posted to the FG
location for the warehouse and their components are backflushed from the
WIP location.  When the kit item is produced its component finished good
parts are getting backflushed from the WIP location instead of the FG
location.  This requires a corresponding transfer from FG to WIP to
correct the inventory balances in both locations.  Another bit of
information is that shop orders are downloaded from BPCS to a PC-based
production reporting/barcode labeling/shipping system and then uploaded
back to BPCS.  They are batch posted through JIT (JIT500?), I believe.

I've tried setting the override location in JIT110 to be FG.  There are
two operations for the kit--"finish" and "report".  I've copied the
workcenters and changed the new workcenter "from" and "to" location
values to both be "FG".  The routing for the kit item was then changed
to use the new workcenters.  Still, when I've tested posting
transactions with JIT600 it backflushes the kit components from WIP.
Can this be set up?  Is there a program fix that we are missing?  Am I
crazy?  (I feel like I'm going
crazy!)

We are on 4.0.2 that was modified for Y2K by 3rd party software long
before I started working here.  Thanks in advance for any advice and
suggestions.

Dave Parnin
Nishikawa Standard Company
Topeka, IN  46571
daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx