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As part of a redesign of one warehouse we are looking for a way to have a single Kanban pull result in a two-step material move that can be handled by WADACO.

The situation is that production cells trigger the kanban, pulling material from the warehouse.  However for the new warehouse design the material must be picked from the warehouse locations and put into a single staging location, and then a separate move needs to be done from the staging location to the production cell.

Is there a way to handle this natively inside IFS, accurately reflecting the true material locations and without any of the warehouse team waiting on material that is not yet in staging?  We use Transport Tasks today so that’s where we’ve been focusing to try to solve but maybe there is a different approach?

If there’s no standard way to achieve this in IFS, the best thought I have at this time is as follows but it seems like overkill:

  1. Use an event to kill any Transport Task that gets created to pull from the new warehouse
  2. The event would automatically create a new Transport Task with the same new warehouse location but we would hardcode the destination to be STAGING. 
  3. We would use a custom field on the new Transport Task to store the original destination from the original Trans Task for use later.
  4. When any Transport Task completes with destination of STAGING, we would have another event create a new Transport Task with hardcoded location of STAGING and the destination set to the custom field value from the Trans Task that completed, which would represent the original intended destination.

Open to any thoughts or suggestions either as to a standard feature we’re missing or something better we can build if needed…

Thanks,

Nick

​@NickPorter one of your comments on a related topic brought me to this question. 

Not sure how your Kanban is currently pulling material from warehouse.

Since you are already using transport tasks, what is the possibility of defining a drop-off location in destination-bound and forwarding the location to staging before final transfer?

 

Some excerpts from help texts..

Drop-off location (in warehouse navigator) - Drop-off location on warehouse level is used for moving a part using a transport task. When moving a part between two warehouses it is first moved here. Executing the transport task when using a drop-off location will automatically create a new transport task between the drop-off location and the destination location.

 

Auto Assign Drop-Off Location on Manual Transport Task (in site) - 
Drop-Off locations are used when moving a part or a pallet between two warehouses or two bays. Drop-Off locations are defined in the Warehouse Navigator window, under the General tab on warehouse and bay level. If this check box is enabled it will auto assign a drop-off location, if one is defined, when saving a manual transport task. The auto assigned drop-off location can be removed by right-clicking on the transport task header and clicking Convert to Direct Transport Task. Automatically created transport task will always use drop-off location if one is defined.

 

Forward to location no (transport task line) - 
The location number of the forward-to location. Either enter the short code, select one from the List of Values or leave it empty. If the transport task line or handling unit has a forward-to location number defined, it means that when the transport task line or handling unit is executed a new transport task will be created. The newly created transport task will be created with the to-location as the from-location and the forward-to location number will be the to-location number on the new transport task. The automatically created second transport task will take into consideration any drop-off location if one is defined and the Auto Assign Drop-Off Location on Manual Transport Task check box in the Site/Inventory/Transport Task window is selected. If this check box is not selected a drop-off location can be applied, if one is defined, by right-clicking on the header and clicking Apply Drop-Off Location. The forward-to location is always used for automatically created transport task if a drop-off location is defined. Drop-Off locations can be defined on the Transport Task tab on warehouse and bay level in the Warehouse Navigator window.

 

Thanks ​@Vimukthi Mahakumbura 

We went down the road of using Forward to locations, but have been struggling with duplicate Transport Tasks being created by Kanban (there’s a separate topic on that).  I had thought to wait until everything was resolve but I still think Forward To is the right way to address this, regardless of our other issues.

FWIW, our outstanding issue with the setup is that each time Kanban runs it creates another Transport Task requesting a move of material, even if one or more was already created but not yet delivered.  This means that we get duplicate unnecessary material being moved to locations which cannot even hold that much.  As soon as the first Transport Task is completed (warehouse to the staging point) then kanban seems to recognize that material is on the way and it stops creating additional TTs.  Strangely, it only seems this might only be happening for some material, which doesn’t make much sense, but we continue to investigate.

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