the benefit of using multi-site

Separation of inventory is one of the main purposes

Separation of business streams and ownership is another gain

Separation of the parts that maintained or allowed to be stocked, sold, or otherwise managed

Flexibility of interconnection of orders when needed versus the separation when not desired

For us, in any manufacturing site, we actually maintain four separate sites.

2xx - Sales site where all businesses and products place their orders for products that WON’T be manufactured in that site.  For instance, items sold in the US, but manufactured in the UK go into this sales site and there is a linked order to the UK manufacturing site which is in a different IFS Company.  This sales site contains all product lines for all businesses that can be sold, but is operated as non-inventory so no inventory passes through here as individual parts, just as whole orders entered and invoiced.

3xx - Field Service site were all of the work orders and contracts are processed and maintained for the service business related to that manufacturing sites products.  There are one or more 3xx sites connected depending on the number of regions served but still held as part of the parent company.

4xx - Service Parts site that is co-located with the manufacturing site, but has only service owned parts and inventory.  The parts housed here are a different revenue steam separate from sales, but might serve multiple businesses.  Users/employees operating in this site are separate from the manufacturing processes.  Typically no shop orders here, no configured or custom items, no engineering projects, purchase orders and customer orders are ok, as is inventory which are a subset of the manufacturing sites.  12-15K parts in these sites.  Orders are a mix of spares, warranty, and service replacements.

5xx - Main manufacturing site that is the full operation for the main product(s) manufactured at that site.  There might be 100K parts in this site and all order types and all operations are valid for this site.  Customer Orders here can be full system, new machine orders, OTC orders, mixture of service spares with the other types.  Main factory inventory is housed here.  This manufacturing site can receive the sales orders from all other 2xx sales sites in the other regions/countries that are part of separate legal entities.

By the way...the benefits versus the complexity can’t be well explained in a forum post, it is really a long discussion with a consultant or knowledgeable system architect who understands your business to get to the right number of sites beyond just one.

ronhu,

In quite a lot of the tables/views that IFS contains, the contract (read site) is incorporated. It helps also to prepare additional selections during reporting, overviews and lobby elements.

From an accounting perspective, the contract/site can be used in various places to use different accounts where the process might be the same.

Looking at security, it allows you to have one group of users only to look at site A and the other only to B. Those that should have access to both can also be supported. Only remark here is that there is one default site for a user, that should be set up wisely if a user has multiple.

we associate IFS sites with physical sites, as by setting up the posting controls properly, you can maintain a smaller set of accounts, and still track expenses at each site. we do have one company (01) [base currency USD] for US domestic sales - with 3 sites - our KC distribution center (AKC), our Emporia, kansas manufacturing plant and DC (HM), our Miami, Oklahoma manufacturing plant and DC (HO).

we do have separate companies for Blenheim, On, CA (10) [base currency CDN, alt currency USD] plant and DC, and for our Juarez, Chih, MX (08) Maquiladora plant [base currency USD, alt currency MXN]..

we have been consolidating financial results in an outside package (TIMELINE), but are now working on implementing group consolidation.

we actually cost product slightly differently at the various sites - because we ‘burden’ the cost with cost of transporting the product from manufacturing site to distribution site. so we NEED to have different sites to have different costs PER site.

be aware that if you have multiple sites and you manufacture, you do face some challenges keeping your ‘rev’s in sync between locations. This is not an issue between companies, but IS between sites.