Production and Items in ErpNext

ERPNext Manufacturing
1

Hello,

I’m a total newbie to ERP in general and in ErpNext in special. I have played with ErpNext on a locally installed instance and I find it quite close to my needs but there are specific, key items that I can’t understand yet.
Before asking for help I will briefly define my activity:

We produce items that mainly fall in 6 categories, each category having at least 5 sub-categories, with different operations.
Depending on the project, the items can be unique, or series engineered to specifications. All the Items that we produce have unique names, but in the case of series items, we can also have the same name for the entire series.

As far as I understand , I can create Item Templates that I can further use along the production process.

  • During a normal workflow should I create an item in ErpNext for every item I produce or I can just pick up the right piece from the templates and create a new production order ? If that’s the case, how can I change the name of the PO to be the same with the drawing number of the part I produce?

  • Please note that I intend to use an Erp system to follow the production, therefore i need to know at every time where are the parts, what is the last operation they have gone trough, the duration of all the performed operations.
    In this case, let’s suppose I have 50 identical parts with different delivery dates, going tough 5 operations. In this case, 10 might be already cut, 10 already milled, 5 in deburring, etc. How can I update the status and track them individually?

Case study:

  • Category: CNC milled parts

  • Sub-caregory: Sub1

Operations - cutting, milling, deburring, wrapping

According to the 2D drawing I receive from the client, my product’s name will be 200-200. In this specific case, I will create a unique part with a unique name.

Should I create an item for it or just launch a production order based on the template previously created? How will the operators be able to fill in the times in timesheet if the timesheet name cannot be changed (eg: timesheet name: TS-000375)?

What is the intended correct workflow for this application?

Thanks,

1 Like
2

For this u can use Item Groups

3

Hello JoEz,

Thanks for the fast reply. As far as I see the Item Groups only group the items according to a common characteristic, but I don’t see how that would solve the above issues. Could you please be a little more specific ?

Thanks in advance,
Eddie

4

It seems you need to write a custom script to generate item name and use serialized items when needed

5

You can customize the timesheet document to include the name of the item it is generated for. In this way you can also filter them and display the item name in the timesheets page.

For the other questions I am also curious what is the best /easiest / fastest way to create the items for an order.

  • Is is better to have item templates (variants)?
  • Is it better to have some items created for each category and just copy and customize them depending on the order?

Community? What do you think?

6

@Eddie, @sorin.negulescu : Variants sound like a better option IMHO