Item Variant Manufacturers

[sancloud]

Hello
I am currently assessing ERPNext to see if it will satisfy our stock control and manufacturing.
It is looking like a feature rich application.

We manufacture electronic devices using a factory and supply the raw materials/components for the factory to assemble into the finished assembly.

I can see how we create all the items for capacitors, resistors, ic’s etc and then apply those to the BOM for the finished assembly.

We can have a number of different manufacturers for a component used e.g.
CAP-10U010805 can be manufactured by Yageo, Samsung or another manufacturer of the same rating and package size.

We purchase normally dependant upon availablility as they all do the same job.

Is there any way to specify the different manufacturers as the same part number ?
We supply our BOM to the factory with the allowable substitutions listed, can these also be listed in the BOM ?

This may be outside of the capabilities on ERPNext but would be great if it supports this kind of manufacturing.

Thanks
Marc

[JayRam]

Hi Marc,

Welcome! And we sure hope you will implement ERPNext for your organization.

There is an an Item Alternative feature where you can say ItemB is an alternative to ItemA and the other way round. Or just ItemB is an alternative to ItemA (Maybe because ItemB does more than what ItemA does, so ItemA is not an alternative to ItemB). And in the BOM you can specify the alternative item.

I really haven’t implemented this for any of my clients, so I don’t know how well it works and the slippery slopes, if any.

But yes, on the face of it, ERPNext must be able to do what you require. The other alternative is to setup a generic item. Make it a batched item and use the Manufacturer as the Batch Number with a Running Serial Number or Capture the Manufacturer as a Field in the Batch Document. If your items have to be serialized, then you can capture the Manufacturer in the Serial Number document.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Jay

[sancloud]

Hi Jay, Thank you for the response.
I think I may have worked it out. I have created the item e.g.:
CAP-10U010805 as Raw Material

Under its properties I have assigned multiple Item Manufacturers;

Lets see how it works for tool output to allow the factory to see they can use either part.

Thanks
Marc