Impact of Engineering Changes on Cumulative Orders
Posted on: November 3, 2017 | By: Andrew Hall | QAD Manufacturing
If you are operating in a Repetitive / Advanced Repetitive environment, it is important for you to be aware of the impact of Product Structure changes on QAD functionality.
Within the Repetitive functionality, QAD uses the concept of a cumulative order to track all of the financial impacts of production. The cumulative order is created, based on how you have QAD configured in the Repetitive Control File, the first time a transaction is done against a unique combination of Item Number, Site, Production Line, BOM Code and Routing Code. When the cumulative order is created, the Product Structure that is active at that point in time is copied into the cumulative order and serves as the basis for expected costs and, more importantly for the purposes of this posting, as the basis for the backflush. If there is a change to the Product Structure and no action is taken on the existing cumulative order, QAD will continue to backflush based on what was copied in at creation, not on the new Product Structure. This means that the incorrect component(s) may be relieved when a Backflush Transaction is completed.
So, what is one to do? When an engineering change becomes effective, you need to find the existing Cumulative Order and then use Cumulative Order Maintenance to put an end effective date on the current Cumulative ID that is previous to today’s date. Then, the next time a Backflush Transaction is completed, QAD will create a new Cumulative Order and will copy in the newly changed Product Structure. This ensures proper costing, eliminates those pesky Method Change Variances, and ensures the proper components are relieved.