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Bins & Lots together

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MacolaHelp

Instructor
Mar 19, 2003
659
US
Has anyone programmed around the fact that, if using bins & lots together, that the only issue method supported in progression 7x is sequential bin? Even if you have earliest expiration SL on or priority bin issuance, the program will do nothing but sequential. It's broken, bug reported & not even slated for correction or on the drawing board in version 8. How does a food or pharmaceutical company (some of our target industries) use the product if we can't issue our oldest product first and we have a big enough warehouse that we want to use random multiple bins? Are we supposed to constantly move our product to the lowest numbered bin?

During our testing phase, we had discovered that lot expiration wasn't used if binned, but we thought priority bin method was working. Unfortunately, we must have just happened to have the lowest bin priority on the lowest numbered bin, so we didn't discover this limitation until we converted their entire warehouse over to bins & lots. The project took 5 days to complete using the entire company staff & 2 days of my time. Needless to say, the owner is very unhappy. I have asked that this limitation be included in the inventory documentation & on line help. No infomine articles existed about this subject as of 7/28.

My primary problem lies in the issuance of work orders. I have to turn on issue components in PP setup in order to get the bins & lots my mfg people need on the work order to use the oldest stock first. To replicate all that macola does during the issuance of product when printing the work order would be a huge undertaking due to the number of files affected during the release & print process.

Any ideas out there would be greatly appreciated. Since my client implemented MRP in order to support the bin/lot issuance methodology, they are feeling "oversold". I can't really blame them for feeling that way. We all know any software is buggy, but this combo of bins/lots & its processing in POP is pretty clunky. I'm amazed that there isn't more than one bug report out there on this subject. It used to be that we could add to an existing bug report to make our collective voices move a correction up in priority, but I haven't discovered a way to do that yet in the eSynergy workflow. Last time I asked support to add my client to a pre-existing bug request, they said they couldn't do that anymore.

And, if you are monitoring, Mr. Rose, please note that I am going through the macola sales & support channel to try to find out if we can come up with a solution for these folks. If you can expedite some action on their behalf, you will have my thanks for a job well done. I'm not sure what you intended on the "pay me now or pay me later" comment in the ES thread, but I don't charge my clients for bugs & breaks in the software or my time to research it unless it is something unique to their environment or business. In this case, the idea of using random multiple bins and lotting simultaneously seems a very reasonable assumption in today's world. Whatever solution we might find for them programmatically will cost some $$. I assume the client will pay the tab for that if they are willing.
 
Actually, if you use only SL you can do expiration, sequential or fifo. If you use only bins you can use priority or sequential. If you use both, however, the issue method is bin sequential, end of story, even if you turn off bin issue method, as long as lotting is on.

The infomine you reference deals w/lotted inventory only, not both binned and lotted. I'm not surprised that the program behaves this way in retrospect. Macola has always prohibited the use of LIFO or FIFO costing w/serial lot inventory. Why would bins be different? They would have to consider all the extra tables involved in FIFO/LIFO layering or all the serial/lot files & bins files when doing allocations & issues.

And have we mentioned how do you know your empty warehouse bins so you can randomly enter the next inventory receipt? Since bins & items are linked together, we apparently can't see if a bin is empty of all product. I could probably write a crystal report to select all bins with zero QOH at all locations, but if I purge the zero bins, that might not work. Anyone been down this road, or I am the pioneer?

The good news: they are working on a solution (only available in sql) to key the file to check for oldest expiration date if SL control is enabled, and they are doing it quite rapidly. The bad news: the small pervasive client w/no budget for software updates, server updates & hardware updates is S.O.L. (as is my client). So, I will perhaps try to modify the ddf for a pervasive search if I don't find any shortcuts through programming already out there today to create my own keys to the info they need. Not a pretty solution, but workable if they need to stay on this version of macola for the next 2 years.

Thanks in advance for any info you can provide. There is at least hope out there for sql/ES sites that this issue might be resolved. I can't road test it @ my client site to make sure it works right, but if anyone else out there has issues with this, log a support call & I can dig out the bug report if you need it to get the fix in sql 7.6.200 (I believe).
 
If your client needs serious traceability for serial/lot items and would like to use barcoding then you should look into ASC Trac by Advanced Systems. The product is still relatively new to Macola, but the interface, features, etc. are top notch. I have 3 installs of this product and the current one is with Macola 7.6 for SQL server. It is not perfect, but it is 100x better than Macola's basic inventory manager. It also works with the POP module and allows for paperless production picking on a FIFO basis.
 
Yes, I got a fix for 7.6.200 SQL, but have not tested as my client doesn't have the hardware to make this move. Do you need/want? If so, include your email & I'll forward what I got to you. I won't have any time to test this for quite a while as I am still reluctant to install 7.6.200 anywhere unless I have to. It still sounds too problematic. Macola has told me only 2 clients have reported this problem to date. If there are others out there, they could use this assist if it really works. Macola doesn't plan to deploy as a service pack, only on an "as needed" basis.
 
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