Hi all,

I’m scheduling an entire product, to be manufactured from scratch,  with MRP (Apps 10) and APB.

How can I plan the upper levels of the bill, i.e. the assembly parts, to start only when the component pieces are projected to be available based on their CBS scheduled finish dates. So, the shop order for part .’..GA’ has an Earliest Start (as found in the header of the order) of much greater than whenever the requisition was accepted.

Typical product:

Level 0 = General Assembly

Level 1 = Sub-assemblies

Level 2 = Piece Part Requirements  

Our capacity constraints are in making the piece parts (L2) which are time-consuming operations. Hence, I need to finitely schedule that list of parts in APB based on resource loading then, schedule the upper-levels to start based on the projected availability of L2. 

Tying materials with ‘Operation No.’ in ‘Product structure’ doesn’t provide assistance because the resulting action messages are downwards-looking. Early/Late Order actions would be among L2 materials, relative to the Required Date in the parent. But if there’s no throttle for completing the top-level materials, since we’ve got lots of capacity for building, all the piece parts would read ‘Late Order’. 

The other option, perhaps, is to CBS schedule L2, then enter the header of each parts in L1 and 0, right-click ‘Material Planning‘ then ‘Update ESD According to Material Availability’. But this encounters a problem too. If the component of the part is not currently stocked, they it reverts to the generic MRP lead time for said part. But, again, we’d like to schedule the assembly based on the predicted CBS scheduled dates for the lower-levels.

Any thoughts?

many thanks,

Jay