I’ve been using Production Orders to create the equipment we sell but it’s getting really complicated. Having to create a single Order in order to have a template every time a new item or change is made in a new item is becoming problematic. I’m often told by my engineer about a change that is happening before anything is being built. I don’t always remember a couple weeks later to create a corrected single Production Order and that’s an issue. (I should state that we are a reseller first and a manufacturer second - this is not the main thrust of what we do but it is an important part.)
We generally build on demand or in smaller quantities once a week. Currently there are two parts to our production - a main board and then the completion of the item with all the add-ons to the board. I’m hoping that using Inventory Kits will allow me to do the math on quantities and keep items included more current. It would be really helpful to have the main boards as one kit and then the completed items as a second kit. This would require imbedding one kit into another. Since my items generally have 10-20 pieces per unit, I’d like to find out if this can work before I go through and enter all the little bits and pieces and then find out it doesn’t work. It would also mean a lot less entering of items over and over again if it does work.
Yes - I know that Inventory Kits is not really where this should likely be but I just can’t take the time required to work around the lack of BOM and basic math functions in the Production Orders. I had hoped that with all the new updates that might be fixed but am now assuming that it would be too difficult to pull off in the back-end of software and am looking to find a different way to accomplish what I need.
there is no option to add an inventory kit within an inventory kit.
but why do you need such a feature when basically you are just adding the same items in a third inventory kit which are already part of the other two inventory kits? also, why not use the Clone feature available in inventory kits when you need to change or add another item?
I wasn’t planning to use 2 kits to make a third, just making a 2 ‘board’ kits (which have about 15 parts each) and then add those into all the various commercial products we sell along with the 15-20 additional parts used for each specific SKU ( our products are based on one of the two boards). That way if we made a change in a basic board, it would flow over all the products instead of my having to go through each and every one to make the change.
I hadn’t thought about using the clone function though. that will make the initial entry easier but doesn’t fix the ‘changes’ that might happen issue.
Guess I’ll try it for this year and see if using large kits works better, easier, less errors than Production orders have for the last 2 years. I can always go back in 2023 if necessary.
Hello @KrisK
From Your Explanation what i am able to understand is-
You Are Making Multiple Types of Boards from Different raw Materials And Then You have some other Additional Parts which you add into That board And The Board with Additional Parts are Being Sold.
for this You Have Created multiple Inventory Kits For Board Raw Material ( One for each type of Board ) and another Inventory Kit For Additional Parts.
and now you want That Inventory Kit made for One type of Board should be added into the Inventory kit of Additional Parts.
That sounds correct. We build Board A and Board B. We add additional parts to each board to create, in the end, 9 different products. So board A + X Additions = Item 1, board A + Y additions = Item 2, etc.
Each board has an average of 15 components and each ‘addition’ has 10-15 components. There is overlap in the parts included in the ‘additions’ as well but they are not all exactly the same.
Our (or rather my - as the accountant) problem is keeping track of changes in those components. Since Manager has no option for a Bill Of Materials for Production Orders, I cannot make the changes until I build at least 1 of the items. Building 1 (even if more were built) is how I was creating a template to reuse for larger numbers of product builds going forward. I’m being told about parts changes BEFORE the builds actually happen, sometimes a couple weeks ahead. It’s becoming harder for me to keep track of these changes correctly while doing all the other accounting I need to do. I also have to do the math in every component line on the Production Order (i.e. I need 3 but my template is for 1 so each component needs to have 3* added in front of it for the parts usage to be correct in the Production Order since Manager can’t do that math itself. This is also time consuming since I have to click into each line to add the 3*. You can’t tab into the field - it highlights the number already there and replaces it instead of pasting the math in front of it.
Most of the time we do ‘just in time’ manufacturing - enough to cover the orders for the day and maybe a little extra but no more. I’m hoping that using kits I will have less errors in changing out materials (maybe) and rather than having to do Production Orders and then sales, the sales will take care of removing components from Inventory. Still not a good answer and still likely to cause component errors since each sales item will now contain 20-30 individual components (since I can’t combine kits) but I’m going to try it. We’ll see how it goes.
@KrisK, I think this is the wrong road to go down at the present time. The entire concept of inventory kits is that all items are stocked as completed items. They are only sold together for convenience. (Radio controlled car + 2 AA batteries = Car Kit. The car does not include the batteries because they could expire before the car is sold.) While it possible to use inventory kits in other ways, such a kit that sells 1/12 of a case of wine instead of having a separate inventory item for individual bottles, what you are talking about is more complex.
Future evolution of inventory kits may not take place with your use case in mind. So you might find your entire workflow broken. It seems easier given the current state of the program to use the clone feature on production orders, which are meant for the purpose you describe. When a change occurs, edit the most recent production order as you clone it, giving it a new finished item. You should be creating new inventory items when there is a part change anyway for good configuration control. Of course, it is easier if you clone a production order that already is set up for the right quantity. (Standardizing production lot size could help there.)
I deeply sympathize with your frustration over the lack of a bill of materials that can be called up and multiplied by the number of finished items desired. But that is already in the ideas category: Production Orders - Enhancements. Unfortunately, it was the very first idea placed into the category when the ideas tag was introduced in 2017. It languishes there still.