This is the way the WMS was designed and/or developed. Our WMS has no Wave Capability. When you enter an Order, unless you manually put it on status Hold, it goes down to the WMS no matter what. Qty Ordered always = Qty Shipped, the Ship dates on the line, as well as the Qty Order/Qty Ship are irrelevant in this process, they don’t mean a thing since we have no true waving capability. Our WMS lets you pick negative, it doesn’t care there is no quantity on hand. When an Item is ordered, and it makes it down to WMS, and it is “short”, the system is tricked by picking it, billing and invoicing it through the interface, and then crediting the order for what was short. The interface is currently not sophisticated enough to update quantity to ship and all recalc all order totals based on what is actually shipped in WMS. Trust me, this is the simplest way as we really aren’t willing to invest anymore more dollars into this current technology piece right now.
Normally, we have outside code in place to prevent us from entering orders for parts out of stock, so the process above is a relatively infrequent exception. However, when we release new products to our product line, for whatever reason, these new products sometimes make it onto OE Lines and then needs to go through the process in the above paragraph (this is exactly why we want to prevent the item from being entered into OE) – and these new items can’t go through our outside code process. So we are looking for a quick way to prevent these types of items making it on OE Orders before their customer release dates. One would think you could flag the item on hold or playing with active dates, you could prevent this from Sales entry. Unfortunately, we still need to plan for it (MRP/Planning), and still need to produce it in SFC, PRIOR to the product release to our customers. Unfortunately changing these Active flags or Dates also tends to shut off the planning and mfg capabilities – so I haven’t been able to find a flag as of yet. Setting the item to “Planning” Activity code seems to work, but I am afraid to execute a planning bill item through SFC and MCA, as well as Costing.
As far as future, or what we would like to do – we are currently addressing our WMS situation (I’m not going to disclose details of what we run); we just went live with a new planning system with robust promise capabilities; and we are currently in the process of figuring out the best way to allocate out of OE. I’d say we are 12 to 18 months away from being fully functional – front to back from order to fulfillment – the correct way, with all systems in place. Until then, we’re looking for a way (a flag) to prevent Orders from being entered in OE while still letting us plan and manufacture.
Thanks.
