We are beginning our implementation, coming from MK. We have a need to store WIP (i.e. production orders that are not completed) in a physical warehouse. Currently we are using a 3rd party software that allows us to store these unfinished items by item code, production order number, and operation. Can something similar be accomplished using LN or Factory Track?

In Infor LN, there is no provision to store the WIP in warehouse. you need to create different production order at each stage of the production.

Can I ask why you are moving uncompleted wip to a warehouse? In our case if our WIP went on hold - we would just gather everything up and put it in an on hold location until more funding was available. I don't know all the details, but wondering if something just generic like that might work. Another question - can an interface be developed for this 3rd party software? Maybe not a good solution, but might let you keep using it.

Thanks for the replies.

We are a contract manufacturer - i.e. the products we make are not our own design. The industries and clients we serve are quite varied and the type of work in which we specialize is low volume, high mix, high complexity. This means that the product on the shop floor varies from day to day - no repetitive manufacturing here. We also use MAPICS SCM as our planning tool (based on the Theory of Constraints) which dictates that we keep our constraint workcenter (or "drum") fed with product. While feeder departments may work 1 or 2 shifts, the drum works 24/7. It needs to have, at a minimum, a shift's worth of work in queue. This particular workcenter has 4 rows by 4 levels by 100' each of racking that contains both a mix of finished goods (sub-component items), purchased goods, and WIP. The items on these shelves turn multiple times per day - we aren't storing long term. There simply is no room to stage these things in the actual work area.

We were (are) using a 3rd party software which we populate with the item codes of all items that either end in this department's warehouse as sub-components or which contain this workcenter in their standard route. Items and WIP are scanned in and out of their locations in this software. Obviously, there is no tie back to the ERP system's actual inventory and WIP - it is strictly used as location control tool.

We are considering using the "Container Data" section of the SFC Planning table to hold location information. Unfortunately, this means we are going to burden a material handler with the responsibility of making the differentiation between WIP and finished product - something they have not had to do before.

Got it - we are kind of the same low volume and some very complex work, but a low mix. Some of our products take years to build. But we do have room on our shop floor to move work to. So each building has like an MRB (material review area) location and I believe each work center has space for what might be next in line. Which is like never that much since a part can be on 1 machine for months. Our dispatch report (which we modified) would show what was on hold. We never did get into containers and we migrated to oracle ebs and still do not have to use those.

Sorry not familiar with Mapics(even though we have one site still using it for something) or even LN (which probably has more functionality than I know). What we did in Baan IV was use a source extender program (qkey - which is no longer available) to add addition fields to track a variety of things like status, locations, etc. So basically we left standard baan alone and added additional tables to track what we wanted. I believe LN has a method of doing that - but it means coding and not really using standard out of the box functionality.

Coming from MK (watered down Baan IV), the curve is steep and I'm still in the process of figuring things out. One item in particular is the steering away from using the VRC structure for customizations - I'm talking non-source code type. Before, if I wanted to tweak a report, I'd copy it to a DEV VRC, make my changes and then publish it to PROD. Now, you can use something called personalization: prior to printing a report, you select an option to "personalize" and it brings up a report designer. Once saved, it will apply only to you. You can then copy the personalization to various levels, up to "company". There is also a tool called extensibility, which is where report scripts for such personalizations now reside. Extensibility can also be used to add Customer Defined Fields to tables, after which you could personalize sessions, forms and reports to include those fields. All of these changes are held in a new package called "tx" - not in a special VRC.

Anyway, now that I've had some time to play around, it would seem there are at least a couple of ways to achieve what we need even if they are not ideal.