Working with a US customer that is about to start manufacturing one of their products in the UK, and have lots of parts in the BOM’s with UOM like feet, inch, gallon, lb, ounce, etc.  They asked about having different UOM’s in the UK versus US and how could this work with Engineering Transfers to the different sites.  They use Engineering Parts & Engineering Transfer today.  They have the full CAD integration to IFS, and their drawings are also in the IFS doc man database.

It is possible to have a different Inventory Part UOM versus the Part Master, as long as it’s same type of UOM (length, volume, weight) and the conversion factor is there.  Inches to centimeters for example.  However when it comes to Engineering Transfer, IFS does NOT do the BOM quantity conversion if the site’s UOM is different than the Engineering Part UOM. You get a warning on the different UOM, and it transfers the BOM with same Qty as on the Engineering BOM.  You would have to convert it manually after, or use the Engineering Transfer Graphic screen to edit before completing transfer.  Also I did not find a way for engineering transfer to change the UOM during the process, for example if transferring an existing part to a new site, and you want the UOM in that site to be different than the Part Master UOM.  Only approach I found was to manually create the Inventory Part first, pick the desired UOM, then save.  Once saved can’t change the Inventory Part UOM.

We discussed Input UOM as an option, it’s under consideration but not seen as ideal for them.  We also discussed Purchase UOM, that can definitely handle the procurement side.  But they are just as concerned about the shop orders.

Just wondering if anyone has run into this, and how was it handled.  Or if you have used different UOM for same part in different sites did this cause any issues?

Our current thought is to migrate instead of Engineering Transfer to create the parts in the UK with correct UOM, and migrate in the BOM’s with correct quantity, and fore-go the Engineering Transfer.  Interested what solutions others have used.