Is there any way in Baan to handle the situation where item 'A' is sometimes manufactured using raw material item 'B' and sometimes manufactured using raw material item 'C' ?

We use very simple manually production orders (no tasks, no operations) and we sometimes want to manufacture item 'A' from raw material item 'B' and sometimes want to manufacture the same item 'A' from raw material item 'C'. (In reality items 'B' and 'C' are very similar but come from different suppliers)

Engineering items have been suggested but at first glance this looks quite involved.

We use Baan 5.0b.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

This may help but it may not!

In 4c4, on the BOM form 2 there is an effective date and an expiry date - may help if you have "long" periods of using one component rather than another.
Although this won't help if you can & do make it either way at the same time!

Thanks for your reply - unfortunately the choice whether to use raw material item 'B' or raw material item 'C' could chop and change from one production order to the next.

I guess I was wondering if production orders for the same item could somehow be differentiated (eg by different routings or operations) in such way that different raw material items were selected from the BOM.

This has always been a disparity between the Routings and BOMs in Baan: being able to set up multiple Routings per Item but only one BOM. Theoretically, you could probably set up Generic BOMs and use the Product Configurator to choose which raw material you're going to use. However, that would involve a lot of overhead for something that otherwise sounds fairly simple. I would look at the possibility of setting up your BOM with the raw material that you use most often. For production orders where you choose to use the other raw material, change the item that is to be used using sessions Estimated Materials or Material to Issue for Production Orders, before any of the material is issued.

Thanks for your reply.

I think this case is covered by BaaN functionality - you can adjust both the BOM and Routing for your production orders. It is temporary and does not affect the 'basic' BOM and Routing...

In addition you have to concider the cost of material A vs material B, but this is another subject.

(btw I think you can use it for customized items only, not sure - I have never been in this situation)

It's got it's drawbacks, but what if you set up two versions of the same item with some sort of prefix or suffix (i.e. XYZ-B and XYZ-C). Then each could be set up with a BOM using the raw material you want.

This would make it easy to set up the work order and would capture the correct cost for each variable.

It would, however, cause problems stocking the finished items as two separate numbers, or using them in a higher assembly BOM. Convert them with a rework work order?

Just another possibility...

You could also use Item Transfer Warehousing Orders to convert XYZ-B to XYZ-C or vice versa. Having the final item inventoried under one item code is definitely a plus. If there is a difference in costs between B and C, that would be reflected in a difference in costs between XYZ-B and XYZ-C and some kind of a variance account would have to be set up to handle the conversion of the one item to the other.

Dear all,

The simplest way to achieve this is by manipulating BOM dates. You would lose the BOM (and routing) history functionality but would be able to achieve just that: having 2 BOM trees for an item.

For A's BOM, set it up so that in year 2002 material B is used and year 2003 material C is used. Then every time a production order has to be created, if material B is to be used then set the prod order's reference date to some time in 2002, if material C is to be used then set prod order's reference date to some time in 2003

What do you guys think?

Rgds,
Paul

Paul,

That's sounds like a pretty good idea ... never thought about doing it that way before. Is the Production Reference Date used for anything other than picking up the relevant BOMs and Routings? If not, I suppose there should be no negative impact from having a non-current date in that field.

Sujoy.

How about enginering revisions?

I think u can use the alternative item concept to achieve this..

I am not sure when and how it works. What I think for its basis is one the BOM item is not available but the inventory of alternative item maintained for the BOM item exists.. System will take alternative item into ur BOM. It acts as if BOM item is default item for manufacture of Main product but alternate item can be used incase sufficient inventory is not availble...

Regards

Puneet

Hi i have not worked on baan 5b , but i am working on baan 5c and I believe the functionality will be pretty much similar to 5b.
So kindly verify the solution after due testing.

One way handling the two different material for the same manufacturing item is use a product configuration functionality.
Which I think is not a viable solution for you as you I think are using very simple setups there.

What I will suggest you is one you create a production order for the manufacture A and then change the item B to C in the estimate material list.
But you have to be careful for selecting the parameter in the Maintain production order. In Production order data in form 3 the costing data there is a parameter Freeze Estimate cost and the option there will be "At the time of creation", " during release of order" & " after first WIP transaction takes place"
I recommend you to choose the third option to freeze estimate after first WIP transaction takes place, so you will get more time to change your estimate material list. Once the estimates are frozen, then use the session "issue material for production order" for any change of material. Any change in material planning will be into effect on the next run of EP if you are using the Planning engines to plan your material.

Another option you can look into is using the Material routing relationship from the BOM. I have not tested this so far, but I am pretty sure this might work for you.
All you have to do is create two routing code for the items and create two bom line for the item B and C and attached B and C with different routing. And use the different routing code for the production order of item as the material is required.
I have not tested this option as baan system is not currently available with me . so kindly do the testing and find out the correct solution for yourself .

I'd like to expand on the suggestion posted by hexagenia as a question. Since the functionality when opening a work order allows you to select the revision of the assembly you wish to build why not have two different BOMS (say revisions A and B) for the same part number? Then select which ever revision (and thus the BOM) when opening the work order. Of course this method would mean that MRP etc would not plan for the materials on the "expired" revision since only one revision per part number can be active in BaaN. But perhaps, if there are not too many part numbers involved the "expired" piece parts could be handled by manually inserting demand or using a min max set up. You should also be aware that any differences in material cost will hit as a variance from the work order system.

As far as routings go 4c allows you to have multiple routings for the same part number and the routing to be used is also selectable opon opening the work order. The kicker is that only one routing can be used for costing purposes. I've never tried multiple routings, it could be that all the labor will hit as a variance.

You should probably do extensive testing on both (including the financial impact) but, theoretically, I think you can do it!

Hi Gary,
I may not support the idea of handling the revision for the parts.
That is not a correct optimized way to handle this .
See another suggestion i would like to make and that s i have seen happening at most of the places that.

Copy/Create the Fg item to the new item with same BOM and routing and then change the part X with Y in its BOM component if it goes directly int he the FG part or else the main component of the X/Y and add a diff component to the Fg. This way you can have two differnet FG items . Now plan and create production order for two diferent items as it is required.