Hi,
I was testing the open erp scheduler as follows but found it a little unintelligent in functionality or maybe i'm wrong (i hope i'am):

I have only the mrp and the report_mrp modules from the manufacturing modules installed

Created 3 Sales Orders one the same day for the same product & same delivery delay - with quantities 10, 10 and 30

The product BOM needs one raw material and has a routing through 3 workcenters. Each work center has a capacity per cycle of 50 - here my understanding is that if i need to create 50 products i have to run 1 cycle per work center ie total 3 cycles

Now i ran the scheduler and i got 3 POs for the raw material and 3 Production order with 3 cycles per production order that is a total of 9 cycles !!??? And the production order produces 10, 10 and 30 products.
The planned dates for all of these are the same


Should'nt i get 1 PO for the raw materials and 1 Production order for 50 products...

The problem with the POs i can mitigate by merging the POs into one but i couldnt find a similar function for production orders.

Also is there a way to change a production order to a purchase order ie i have configured the product as a make to order product with the supply method as produce. But i will only produce if i have a certain no of products to make, if the order has less quantities i would buy it from a supplier and deliver it to the customer (more like a trader)

Thanks
Fabio

Another thing thats funny or maybe im doing something wrong is that if i create a single sales order with many sale order line items (all items have the same supplier in the product form)
When i run the scheduler i get one Purchase Order per sales order line which is absolutely crazy.. at the least they should be grouped by supplier and added to POs depending on the no. of suppliers involved.

Is this how its is supposed to work?

Thanks
Fabio

I think you're getting separate production orders because you've configured the product as make to order instead of make to stock. If you configure it as make to stock and create a minimum stock rule with a minimum of zero, maximum of zero and quantity of one, then the scheduler will create a production order for exactly the amount you have sold since the scheduler last ran. If you don't mind carrying inventory of finished product, then you can adjust the values higher to reduce the number of production orders you will run.

See the documentation for minimum stock rules.

Hi donkirkby,
Thanks for your reply, I will try this out. I never considered make to stock as we dont need to stock all the products. The no. of actual products run into thousands because of the no. of variable specifications and its expensive to stock all these permutations.

Thanks
Fabio

Hello Fabio,

As I written to you in mail, this problem looks challenging for me too.
And my opinion is:

1. OpenERP uses procurement functionality to have whole MRP flow implemented. And this implementation of procurement requires that each procurement order is pointing (tracing) one stock move. In Procurement it is visible as Reservation. When purchase order is created each its line also have to point to this move (it is not visible). This pointing is used to control the flow by mrp. If purchase order is collecting different procurement to one line it would cause mrp not working. I think it is the same for production order.

2. To have the functionality you ask for (collecting purchase lines) the system should be improved by complicated and heavy (in system performance) code. I hope such functionality appears some day but it needs total change of internal design and I don't expect it it near future.

3. To have purchase lines collected you should adopt minimal warehouse rules which doesn't treat each requirement separately like MTO does. Module stock_planning works similar to minimal warehouse rules so culd be solution too.

4. In my opinion when system calculates various products (either from MTO, MTS or MPS) and they have to be purchased from the same supplier, at the same day, with the same pricelist and to the same location they should be collected to the same Purchase Order. (as purchase merging does). I mean they should be merged on fly. And after your mail I written such patch which will be proposed to community. But it will be just collecting to one Purchase order not to one Purchase order line because it would break current mrp design/convention.

Hey Grzegorz,
Thanks for your reply. I was working out the ideas you have posted earlier with context to what i have read about MPS and what my client requires.
I was thinking along the lines of creating a level lower than the Purchase order in the system i.e a Purchase Requisiton stage.

Ive created a basic module for Purchase Requisitions in open erp (mainly used for internal purchases with budgets and approval levels)
In this module i allow combining purchase requisition lines to create a new PO.

Using this concept a new procurement (sales order line) that needs to be purchased can be created as a purchase requisition line (with the entire list of purchases for a sale order in a purchase requisition)

This way purchase requisition lines can be moved into or out of a Purchase order either via automation or manually.

Thanks
Fabio

fabiolus

I like you approach of purchase requisition.
Is this module available somewhere. I would really like to give it a try.

Hi gdutoit,
Im sorry to reply so late.. the module was created for a client just as a proof of concept.. the idea was dropped as the client's employees were to small in no. to use such a module. The module was just roughly coded and in no way confines to any programming guidelines set up by openerp.

I spent some time on openerp RC 6 and i remember coming across a menu item Purchase Requisition.. if it was just purchase order reworded or the purchase requisition functionality as described above i did not go to check.. was to busy and frustrated getting openerp-web working on the XP machine.

However i do plan to create a module where purchase requisitions are used to drive POs and MOs in a way compatible with MPS. I should have something done by the end of Jan '11.. If you are still interested let me know I will be glad to share the module with you.

Thanks
Fabio

fabious,

Am interested in the module please. Thanks.

no worries.. will update this thread when ive got something..

thanks
Fabio