Production Lot Management (extended to include picking, manufacture and valuation)
TinyERP has a wonderfully robust double entry stock system and tracking of production lots once picked is excellent, but the picking of production lots is not good and also an opportunity is lost by not allowing costs to be recorded by lot. The picking function does not presently limit picking of a production lot to the available quantity of that lot and cannot automatically allocate production lots. Sure you can click on each line and allocate a production lot but TinyERP gives no indication which production lots apply to which product, gives no indication of the available quantity, lets you to allocate more than you have and even allows you to allocate a production lot belonging to an entirely different product. The concept I assume is that the warehouse operative picks the lot and then tells TinyERP which production lot has been picked but in reality the reverse is often prefeed requiring TinyERP to tell the operative which lots to pick (eg to ensure that the oldest gets picked not the newest most easily accessed). Many industries would benefit from automatic production lot allocation (eg by FIFO or expiry date), combined with the option to make a manual lot selection where necessary at the order or picking stage based on information about lots and quantities available and only permitting valid selections (this would also provide protection against wrong entries for those using production lot picking in the current fashion). Corresponding control of lots consumed in Production, and generation of production lot numbers for goods produced would need to be implemented also. Also when the cost of a lot already consumend in manufacture is updated this would need to be reflected by a change in the cost of the lot produced with it. True valuation of stock could be achieved (and needs to be available to the financial management module for COGS = purchases +opening stock value -computed stock value) if costs through each stage of manufacturing or purchase were allocated to a production lot (or spread over a group of production lots). Every picking method would automatically be catered for (FIFO, LIFO or whatever) as long as production lots were used. A product checkbox to make production lots mandatory might be useful. A side benefit would be to enable my vision of using the Production Management module for import management to be achievable. You could create a "landed costs" function by mapping each shipping stage to a "production process" from factory though eg stuffing container, precarriage, export charges, shipping (including various and varying surcharges), import charges, customs clearance, postcarriage, devanning container, palletising [including consumption of pallets and wrapping materials] and delivery to company warehouse) to a "manufacturing" stages, building up the final cost of each lot. You might also for example want to run a routine weekly adding to the cost of all lots in a warehouse, the relevant pallet storage charge. Where a number of lots comprise a shipment there would need to be a facility to spread costs out over the lots (split by no of pieces, weight or whatever). To give a sensible valuation of stock standard costs (or those off the purchase order) should be applied initially and updated with actual invoices costs, recognising that at the time of sale all costs may not be known or predictable (eg random X-ray inspection by customs or foreign currency costs converted at time of payment into default currency). _______________________________________________ Tinyerp-users mailing list http://tiny.be/mailman/listinfo/tinyerp-users
