Re: Product Structure and Bill of Materials

Answers/comments below the questions..

date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:04:59 -0400
from: "Jeff Williams" <jeffw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: [MAPICS-L] Product Structure and Bill of Materials






Hi everyone. I am looking for some insight. Let me lay some groundwork.
1) My company uses IM and PDM green screen xa 7


2) We have about 3,000 product structures. A lot of which are exactly the
same as some of the others just packaging changes.


3) We are also using a single level bill of material






I have 2 questions.


1) We maintain our product structures a lot this causes a lot of headaches.


What is a good way to use Mapics better to minimize our headaches. I am
exploring phatom records. Any ideas?





Phantoms are good for common groups of parts. Structure the parts to a
phantom item, then structure the phantom to all of the parents that use that
same group of parts. Any maintenance to the parts in the group is done
against the phantom's structure (one time) and it applies to all parent
structures that contain the phantom item. Now the caveats. although MAPICS
will allow you to build and stock the phantom, you really shouldn't. MRP and
shop order release will look for the phantom item in stock and if it finds
any, it will allocate them but only if there is sufficient quantity - it
will not split the requirement to use up the stock and blow through for the
rest. By the way, MRP will want an inventory record for the phantom so it
can blow through it to the components.


2) Sometimes we have the same raw material from 2 suppliers. Currently we
would have 2 different item codes and 2 difference product structures for
this. Is this a better way to handle this?

They should be one item number in MAPICS (as long as they are functionally
identical (form-fit-function rule). You can establish the vendor link
through Purchasing's vendor-item records. If you need to segregate, consider
lot controlling them in inventory.


Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks







Jeff Williams






Have you considered establishing "master" item numbers for the products that
are the same and creating higher-level items for the master item plus the
packaging?


Feel free to call or email me directly to further discuss.



Dave Turbide

(603) 964-6903 (office)

dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

www.daveturbide.com