Time Apportionment Puzzler

["Tom Wood" <tomw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Facts:
MAPICS XA Release 4
Job Off transactions
Data Collection Connection w/IBM 7526 terminals
PMC,PCC,IM

Background:
I work for a company that makes die castings and have encountered a problem 
with apportioning or allocating actual labor and machine time.  The problem 
occurs since MAPICS allocates or apportions time strictly accross concurrently 
running MO's.  In our environment, we may have three or four MO's running 
concurrently on the same machine, which is not a problem .... however, each MO 
for a particular item may have a different number of inserts or cavities which 
affects the allocation.

Example:
Think of it as a muffin pan that holds 8 muffins ... depending on scheduling, 
the workcenter (muffin pan) may be running 4 blueberry, 2 raisin and 2 plain 
muffins represented by 3 MO's.  In this example, MAPICS would allocate 33% 
labor to each MO, when in reality we need 50% allocated to blueberry, 25% to 
raisin and 25% to plain.

It sounds like a minor problem, but since we have 20 die cast  machines, it has 
become a bigger issue than anticipated.  We hope to resolve within MAPICS and 
without having the operators jump through too many reporting hoops to 
accomplish this.  Also would like to keep mods and customization to a minimum, 
if at all.  Keep in mind, we are using barcode data collection terminals using 
DCC, scanning shop packet turnaround #'s.

Any input is appreciated, thanks.

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