Macola ES Pick Slip options

[JDMiller]

Business recently moved across the country. The business uses Macola ES.

Issue: the move forced the business to source material from new suppliers and some assemblies originally manufactured within the business have been outsourced to new external suppliers. During this transition period, sales have increased 25-30%. Each customer order has many individual line items. Until the supply chain catches up, there are many items that are "out-of-stock".

Problem: When the pick slips are initially generated, all items appear whether or not there is available stock. Our picking crew is wasting time trying to pick these "out-of-stock" items. When we re-print pick tickets they are not sorted by oldest past due date.

How do dramatically improve the "picking" process? We believe we can achieve a 30-50% reduction if we can print pick tickets that only show items with sufficient onhand quantities. Is Crystal Reports a viable option? Is there a third-party addon that improves the process? We are looking for any suggestions that improve the picking process.

 

[dgillz]

Question: Is the problem that the qty to ship = qty ordered at OE time, and by the time the order is ready to be picked, the actual qty on hand has changed?

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

 

[Fishhead714]

We made our own pick slip with Crystal that uses a stored procedure to change the status of the order. Shows all bins available to pick from, bin quantity, and weather or not a partial pick has all ready been made. Also use a nightly job that sets the picking order to one that leads the pickers down the isles without any wasted backtracking.

 

[pronet74]

In our old progression we had a mod written the if it was out of stock when the pick was printed it would just print '****' in the qty field.

How can I do this in ES? I am fluent in VBA/Flex however the pick ticket wouldn't use these or crystal reports.

 

[kscheeler]

pronet74

You would do it with a stored procedure and your own crystal report

Kevin Scheeler

 

[dgillz]

Pronet,

How about using the built in Macola option of not printing zero qty to ship items. Will this work for you?

Software Sales, Training, Implementation and Support for Macola, eSynergy, and Crystal Reports

http://www.gainfocus.biz

"making predictions is tough, especially about the future" - Yogi Berra

 

[NEmacGuy]

Pronet,
I would examine dgillz question.

I would go on the say you really have to learn the options in MacolaES, then examine how those option apply to your business processes.

example :
I have a distributor that never fills the quantity to ship when entering orders (large EDI, and web shop order volume). They run like a swiss watch.

Inventory is received in the morning
They run the fill backorders process (fills up to onhand)
They run the Orders, Customers on credit hold report
Held Order Process ran for selected orders with approval
They print pick tickets for all orders (no zero qty items)
Afternoon picking, packing and shipping orders
4:30pm launch BC polling, all order automatically billed
Print invoices
Prepost invoice list
Post invoices
EDI Processing
Launch custom End of Day Proces

Their process works perfectly for their business, now go down and street to a old time Manufacturer and their process is compeletely different.

Your crystal comment:
I have seen some really nice crystal pick tickets / reports or other custom applications. The clients process did not match what the system could do.
Example : One client prints consolidated pick tickets multiple orders on one form grouped by bin location.

Then again I have seen some that could be done in the system,and better than what was developed if the client understood how the system works.

 

[pronet74]

The problem I having is when we are over-allocated.

We might have an order for 28 cartons but are over-allocated by 14 (qty allocated > qty on hand). So we would still ship 14. We had a mod that would print '****' in the qty field on the pick ticket to let the warehouse guys know that there is a possiblity on that line item not all quantity of that item would ship.

We use 3 piece carbon paper as well so I would have to create a crystal report from scratch I believe.

 

[pronet74]

I have a question. I created the pick ticket in crystal reports & it works. However I can't seem to select that report when the user prints a pick ticket. It will only show the forms that are built in designer, not crystal.

For them to use crystal they have to go under oe->picking->re-print pick tickets. However that only works once they print it out on a form.

Any advice?

 

[crystalreporting]

See this thread:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1238876&page=1

Your other options are Event Manager or some kind of scheduled 'poll' to run the report e.g. Visual Cut.

Peter Shirley

http://www.srhconsulting.com