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How is a product configurator item considered in MRP (e.g. for safety stock)?

  • 6 December 2021
  • 5 replies
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Hi there,

a customer of us wants to have configurable articles. He also has variants of his articles which are machines. So each variant of a series can have configurations which are only decided on while producing the product. 

Now, I was wondering what happens if I use such a configuration article for MRP, e.g. since I want to have a safety stock of 10 machines. Will the MRP only consider the BOM part oder will it suggest to buy/ build the whole configuration possibilities? 

Or before clicking on order in the MRP screen, do I need to configure the article and then one type of configured article will be planned with 10 pieces? 

The question then is, how will acumatica know that I have this concrete instance 10 times in my stock and not the other possible variations? (machines with other configurations)

 

I assume that it is not foreseen that acumatica works with configurations in stock? 

 

Thank you very much in advance.

Best Wishes

 

maracuja

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Best answer by dgodsill97 13 December 2021, 18:20

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Thank you for sharing this tip with the community @dsimone20!

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I used this thread to puzzle out the following for a client, and thought I’d share with the rest of the community:

You probably never noticed, but you can assign a Planning BOM to a stock item. When you do, that is the BOM MRP uses to do a forecast for that part.

To make a planning BOM for a configured part, you need to identify the standard configurations you want to forecast, the parts in each and the % of each configuration you want to forecast.

As an easy example, let’s say I have 2 components in my finished good. One is used all the time, the other is either red or green depending on the configuration. And let’s say 75% of my orders are for the red one. I would create a planning BOM for this finished good, and in it I would include 1 of the part that is always used, .75 of the red part, and .25 of the green one. Then if I forecast 100 of the finished good to be made, MRP would tell me I need 100 of the first part, then 75 red and 25 green to make the 100 units I forecast.

I know your finished goods are more complicated than that, but hopefully that gives you an idea of how to use the forecast feature with a configured item.

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Are you a partner or an end user and where are you located?  If you are a partner, then Acumatica can assist; for an end user, your partner can assist. 

A planning bill is not different than any other bill.  As long as decimals are allowed for quantities you can enter a % as .2 for 20% etc.  All the make planning bill does is update the default planning bill id on the Stock Item and/or Item Warehouse Details.  MRP automatically uses the default planning bill if present and if not the default bill from the Item Warehouse Details.

You would have to ask Acumatica about attribute on lot/serial records.  The GITHUB package has been used by multiple customers.

Thank you very much for your answer. 

Is there any explanation in the acumatica help / documentation where it is explained how to make up a planning bill of material with the percentage allocation? I am a little bit lost how to configure it in the system :D 

I know there is a action to make a BOM a planning bom in the BOM screen, however, it does not do anything after clicking on this setting planning bom action button.

Moreover, I do not see the feature where I can enter the percentages for the forecast of the configuration options.

The github package sounds like a custom development? Is there any ambition by acumatica to include this feature in the core?

Thanks :)

 

 

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For configure to order items it is common to use a planning bill of material which specifies all of the standard parts as well as the percentage of each option expected to be selected.  For example, feature A has 3 options O1, O2, and O3.  50% of of the customer order Q1, 30% O2, and 20% O3.  Periodically, you would revise these percentages based on the ordering pattern.

 

As far as stocking configured products, assuming you are using lot/serial tracking, you would need to store the configuration results id somewhere when the unit is being received into stock so the unit could be identified later. There is a GITHUB package that allows the entry of attributes for the lot/serial number.  Each configuration results ID (multiple tables) have the link to the sales and production ID’s.

 

 

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