Decimal Quantities in BOM

[sfarra]

I am trying to combat a problem that we have been fighting for years at my company and need some suggestions. First some background.

We are in the process of implementing an automated system in which the designer outputs the BOM in csv format and links it to a workorder. The system them automatically creates a purchase order and sends it out. It also creates a list of components and displays information for manufacturing such as material, size of raw material, items ordered / received status, ect. All very cool.

I have been able to tackle all the problems that have come up with some creative relations except one. Let's say I purchase some keystock from McMaster-Carr. The keystock is 12" in length. I need to cut that down to 2" lengths and use 10 of them total. I model the McMaster-Carr part number exactly as described in their product description. I then create a custom part number and make a cut in an assembly showing to modify the part to a 2" length. When I assemble my custom part number into my main assembly, the BOM for the overall assembly shows that I need to order 10 parts from McMaster-Carr, not 2 that I cut into 10 total pieces. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to make the quantity in my overall BOM reflect the actual needed ordered quantity?

I thank you all in advance for your responses

 

[looslib]

You will need to do some custom relations on your custom part number for those items. The problem comes because your BOM shows part# 56485 Qty 10, yet you have to order part# 123456-25 Qty 2. An IF releation in the BOM may work, but it would need to be tweaked for each assembly. ANother option would be to build macros in Excel for each such component and then process the csv against the macros. Again, each is custom. You also don't say who you handle the excess stock? Is the 12" length cut into 6 'equal' lengths allowing for saw blade width, so the custom part is not quite 2" OR do you really get 5-2" length pieces and 1-1.85" length piece? also if you get 6 pieces per bar, need 10 pieces for the assembly, where do the extra 2 pieces go, into stock? How do youi draw down from the stock if you are adding 2 pieces everytime you make an assembly?

Depending on quantity of the 2" pieces used, you may be better off stocking them with a min/max and let the system order new 12" lengths when the min is reached by releasing on order for 2" lengths and use a custom BOM to do the order.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[sfarra]

looslib-

I thank you for your response but would like to redirect your train of thought. I'm not so much worried about the material management side of things as I am the BOM exported from ProE being accurate.

You mention some interesting points that I should clarify. With regards to the size of the finished pieces, I generally make my length tolerance large enough to account for width of blade to that I can get the expected number of parts of equal size. Whether or not they end up the same size is up to manufacturing. With regards to your question about the remainder, they generally go in the scrap bin. We are a custom fab shop and nothing we do is generally more than one or two off. It has been shown many times that it is cheaper for us to buy as much as we need (generally extra) for each project and toss it than it is to maintain and manage stock of anything past bolts, nuts, washers, ect. So there is no problem with figuring out how we draw down on stock before ordering.

The main question I was asking with this post is centering on the relations themselves and what they could look like. My initial thought was to create a relation in the assembly that would require two dimensions be named, "part_length" and "cut_length" for example. "Part_length" would be a dimension in the part file (McMaster-Carr part) and "cut_length" would be in the assembly file. Then the relation would be qty = cut_length/part_length. Then I would have to get the parameter "qty" to report in the BOM instead of rpt.qty. To add another wrinkle to the problem, we currently use a parameter in the repeat region call "&rpt.rel.bom_qty" where bom_qty is a parameter named in the relations of the repeat region to handle bulk items like loc-tite and pipe dope (so quantity can currently be shown as the actual quantity or "AR" for as required. This allows us to use part numbers for bottles of loc-tite and not end up with multiple bottles of loc-tite).

I hope this helps clarify what I am looking to achieve.