Every business is unique and yet ERP systems must be generic enough to work with many clients. That's why the ability to customize an ERP is so important. One of our clients was replacing a legacy quoting system with a new system inside of Epicor® Vantage 8. How do you convert requests for quotes into parts with fully configured methods of manufacturing? Learn what customizations we made to Epicor® Vantage!

Recently, one of our clients was replacing a legacy quoting system with a new system utilizing Epicor® Vantage 8.03. A critical piece of this refresh was making sure there was a way to convert Request for Quotes into parts with a fully configured Method of Manufacturing, or MOM. The customer had a collection of part types, (i.e. shim, washer, ring die), which they needed to be able to customize from the quote screen, with limited information from the quoting person.

By taking advantage of Epicor® Vantage’s Product Configurator functionality, we were able to merge the logic of the legacy quoting system with methodology of the Product Configurator, and create a successful replacement. A key point was finding how much ambiguity we could leave to programming logic and how much user input would be required. We settled on creating a generic “Part” for each type of part the customer needed to configure; a Washer Part, a Shim Part, a Ring Die Part, etc. After these parts were created, we setup a MOM on each that included all of the possible operations, both in house and subcontract, along with a generic material requirements.

When a quote was needed for one of these generic part types, the user simply selected the appropriate part and entered the Configuration screen. Simple inputs were needed like material type, size, hole size, etc. These values were used to query UD tables that were stored with setup times, production standards, valid part numbers from the part master, material costs, as well as a determination of which operations we needed to keep or drop. The UD table information was used to populate production standards for each operation we kept, as well as assign the valid part number. The result is a unique MOM inside the quote for the specific part number that the user can either push straight to an Order/Job, or enter into the Part Master through the engineering workbench.

The last piece to our puzzle was two UD screen customizations created to grant the users the ability to update our above referenced UD table values. When part costs change, production values update, or new part master records are created, users can use these forms to update this information using a friendly, clean interface, rather than stumbling around updating data from the back end.

Do you have a unique data or process challenge with your Epicor® Vantage or Epicor® 9 ERP installation? Contact us today to learn how we can solve it for you!