Hello guys, greetings.
We are just starting to implement ERP next to our business, we are a retailer in glazing, it’s great to use ERP Next, but we having some difficulties.
I realize that working with products like: sheet metals, stone blocks, glazing, wood plates, aluminium profiles, ect … all have the same nature that is, products with high dependencies on dimensions. Here we work with sheets of GLASS, almost all our products or ITEMS depend on two dimensions (length and width) and some important properties like the AREA an WEIGHT will depend of this parameters. My problem is that I could not find for a solution in the forums to how stocking this materials.
Suppose that we acquire glass plates with a fixed dimension from our suppliers and enter in stock, then we need to cut those plates in specific dimension to you customers, add some finished work, polished, ect and sell some services as well included, so we have this situation:
a) Raw products: Control stock levels using units of measure in NOS, even if we need to view how many square meter this quantities represent i think we can use “UOM section” to see stock levels in square meters.
b) Products: Each product have specific dimensions, ( length and a width) and some finishing process (lapidation, holes, temper process, etc …) we can work witch square meter or NOS in UMO’s, but in any case we need to track those initial dimensions.
c) Scrap glass: after the cutting process of glass plates some scrap materials are generated in the process, is very important to track the dimension of those scraps because can be reused latter.
We already create a code to each type of product to implement in ERP Next, but I have no idea how to control this parameters: dimensions, area and weight, all this characteristics depends of the product final dimensions.
Possible solutions:
A) Implement a item codification. In this case the “ITEM name” code have the information about the dimension, but if i only use this codification how i be able to use this “char variable” to extract the length and width to calculate the area and weight, the area parameters in particular is used to calculate prices and control the stock entries. Or this parameter (area) have to be type manually every time that a new ITEM is register on the system ? Besides we get thousands of the same items with different dimensions on stock and someone had to add a new item every time a new product need a quotation. In both situations stock entries working with square meters lost some traceability, but ok.
Final product code example:
Our Code: PRD-VID-TMP-3MM-INC-LAP-1000-1200
PRD- Product or raw material type
VID- product type: Glass
TMP- characteristic of the product: tempered glass
*This first part of the code above we can control easily using “item groups”
3MM-Thickness, each different thickness (3mm, 4mm, 5mm …) will be one type of product in my “item list”.
INC- the color, for this property will use “Item Variant”
LAP- finishing, for this property will use “Item Variant”
Dimensions, each product have different dimensions to specific applications.
1000 - length
1200 - width
Other important Characteristics (Not coded):
Area is a function (Length x width): 7,68 square meters , to control stock entries,the price (quotation) is calculated based on this number.
Weight is a function (Length [m] x width [m] x thickness [mm] x constant 2,5): 9 Kg, important number to freight calculation, quotes and technical data.
B) DIMENSIONS WITH ITEM VARIANTS: With the product code implemented, length and width are added as “item variants”, in this case how to create a custom script that calculates the area and weight based on two item variants variables ?? And each time someone quote a new product, that is the same product with different dimensions and someone have to register a new variant item in the system, resulting in thousands of items variants.
C) ITEM CUSTOM FIELDS: Create a “custom field” parameters (length and width) in the “doctype” ITEM and a “custom script” to calculate area and weight to this custom fields,how to do this ? In this case I will generalize ALL ITEMS to have a dimension dependency in doctype but other ITEMS like hardware, aluminium profiles, accessories, ect ect, don’t necessary need this dependency on dimensions, that’s not good.
appreciate the help