• From: USA, Toledo, OH
  • Registered: 11/03/2009
  • Posts: 8

Topic: Record produced items without a work order?

Hello, I am new to FA, but like what I see so far. 

Our company already has an MES system that it's customized to the product assembly process.  We keep an inventory of finished goods, so there may not always be a work order to tie production to. 

Is there any way to post a consumption transaction from another system, and have it perform all of the inventory transfers as if there was a work order?  Or, is there a way to create a blanket work order and associate production to it?

Other commercial ERP/MRP systems I've used have a 'watchdog' directory where you dump files in a certain format.  The software polls the directory at a specified interval, picks up the files, and processes the parts produced.  I don't think FA has anything like that, but I would also be willing to write an interface that calls FA functions directly.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

  • Registered: 12/25/2007
  • Posts: 2,448

Re: Record produced items without a work order?

As for now there is no universal interface to cooperate with third-party software, but we have several FA extension modules  for importing CSV data, mainly for GL postings. They can serve as reference when implementing extension module for manufacturing data import.
The idea of 'watchdog' directory seems to be interesting, but to be used some CSV importing have to be implemented anyway.

What operations would you like to have available as a part of API for conecting with third party MRP software?

Janusz

  • From: USA, Toledo, OH
  • Registered: 11/03/2009
  • Posts: 8

Re: Record produced items without a work order?

The way software I've used works, you specify a transaction type in the message, and then the data definition for each type must be adhered to.  XML is probably the best fit for this, but it could be just a formatted text document.

Here are some ideas that this negotiating feature could import:

- Consumption: if there's an MES system on the production floor that control the building process, and you just want to tell FA that you've built qty X of part Y.  I have written this add-on, which fires a page periodically that summarizes the production for the day (from the MES tables), and adds a simple work order to FA for this amount.  I am mainly doing just straight inserts into FA tables.  The trickiest part of this was getting around the session and security that is part of the normal application.

- Sales orders: this is for EDI interaction.  I wrote an add-on application for FA that wakes up every 30 minutes, connects to any number of FTP servers, pulls in any 850 purchase order documents, parses them into sales orders, inserts a sales order for each PO received, creates an 855 PO acknowledgement document, and sends it back via FTP.  Again, doing straight table inserts, but would be nice if there was a native FA mechanism to handle this from 'inside' the software.  The app I wrote is in c#, which I can provide source for, if you're interested.

- Shipments: if you are shipping items with a handheld device, or some other application that handles pallet serialization, truck cubing, robotic loading, etc.

- Receipts: again, if you are using a handheld to receive incoming material via scanning.

- Adjustments: if you do inventory cycle counting using a handheld device, you could directly apply the reconciliation to FA inventory levels.

  • Registered: 12/25/2007
  • Posts: 2,448

Re: Record produced items without a work order?

Personally I do not like XML, and consider it as result of typical rotten compromise. Certainly it has some advantages, although I see much better data exchange formats as  candidates for FA API. 

Anyway (providing we have enough time to start API implementation in FA) we should leave aside personal preferences and select some open protocol best fitted to other software which can be used as  data source. What protocol is used for external data exchange in  MSI/ERP software your company use? Does it have some communication API, or the only way of cooperation with external processes is via data export to files as you have described?

If you can send me the code of interface you have implemented, I would be glad. You will find our address for code contributions on site Contact page.

Janusz