Outside Service Vendor Shipments
PowerShift 4.10 offers additional support for those of you that send items out for processing. “Outside processing” is work that the vendor completes on one of your routed operation sequences -- heat treating, powder coating, or plating, for example.
Prior versions created an outside service purchase requisition when the manufacturing order was created. This meant finding the correct requisition and releasing it -- and if you weren’t ready to release the full quantity, you needed a method for sending subsequent shipments to the vendor.
The current release offers an option to not generate outside service purchase requisitions at the time of manufacturing order release. Instead, you run Release Outside Services (WOS) or its RF counterpart RFVOS to select the manufacturing order, operation sequence and the quantity that is physically being sent to the vendor, creating a purchase order for the vendor service. You can optionally display and maintain purchase orders as they are created.
By taking the option to maintain the order as a part of the process, you can improve the information supplied to the vendor, including packaging data, pallet counts, quantities and a better date for when you need the completed items returned.
If you use outside services on your routings, we think you’ll benefit from these improvements. You can try the feature on your "play" system to work out which options provide the best fit for your organization. For example, you might email a copy of the vendor shipment document that details what is being shipped as a "heads up" to your vendor so your order can be considered in their work queue, even though your product has not arrived at their location. Another copy of the document can accompany the goods sent to provide needed details for processing.
Selecting the Create req for outside services? manufacturing system option creates outside service requisitions when the manufacturing order is created. To release them as needed in WOS, leave the option blank.
If you have questions about the best way to handle outside service operations in your production environment, contact the Qantel Helpdesk or call us at 630.300.6999.
