• Plus Work Order
• Material Work Order
• Legacy Work Order

• Legacy Work Order - Standard bill of material is used. Material is allocated at the time the work order is created and back flushed when the work order production is reported and posted.
• Material Work Order - It captures the standard bill of materials and allows it to be modified on a work order by work order basis.  It also allows users to report the actual materials being used at the time of reporting production.
• Plus Work Order - It is Material Work Order + Routing. It allows you to collect real time material and operation (labor) costs. Ideally, it will replace the legacy Shop Floor Control (SFC) and Job Costing (JC) module. Since it collects real time production data, including materials and labor, it is a better solution than Labor Performance (LP). Real time labor analysis is available through various screens and reports.  It has a separate routing file maintenance, which replaces the Standard Product Routing (SPR) module. A separate cost master file replaces Standard Product Costing (SPC).  The Plus Work Order will replace all legacy modules other than the Material Requirement Planning (MRP) and Master Scheduling (MS).  MPR is implemented through the Available to Promise (ATP) feature in Elliott.  MS is implemented through the forecasting function in the COP module.

• Essentially what comes first, the chicken or the egg? How do we create the new structure without losing data integrity of the current system?
  
• Is there a conversion tool that can convert routings (primary and/or secondary) from shop floor control to Work Order Plus?

• Product Structure – Share the same database, no need to change or create anything new.
  
• Department, Work Center, Labor Grade, Operator, Operation ID – These need to be set up in the Work Order Plus new database.
  
• Routing file --- You can either create a new one or convert from the existing Routing in the SPR module. Work Order Plus supports routing with the Operation ID concept. You can use Operation ID as a basis to build up routing used by the Work Order Plus. This will make updating routing easier in the future by updating the Operation ID instead of routing by routing. The Operation ID concept does not exist in SPR.  On the other hand, if you don't want to create these routings manually, Elliott does provide an export utility to retrieve existing routing file data in SPR and importing it into a CSV format. Then you can import the same CSV file to BOMP to create the routing needed for Work Order Plus. All “Notes” in SPR Routing will be converted to Elliott standard Note records that associate to the BOMP Routing file.
  

Q - Can Shop Floor Control and WO+ be run in the same production environment or does installation of WO+ require removal/conversion of all current orders?

A - Yes, SFC and WO+ can be run in the same production environment. You can convert part of your production (like by product line) to WO+ as a trial run before committing fully. 

Q - Are there any changes to licensing that we need to be aware of as we move to WO+?

A - Work Order Plus is included in the standard Elliott package so there's no additional licensing cost to use it.  However, to streamline your operations, you are encouraged to collect real time production data through bar code scanning inside the Work Order Plus production time clock system.  Multiple operators can share the same time clock system. However, distance is an important factor to consider for convenience sake. Depending on how many production time clocks you want to add to your environment, this may increase your Elliott user license count requirements.  If you choose to manually enter production data for Plus Work Order like SFC, then there is no additional licensing cost. 

Added 2/22/2017:

Q - In BOMP setup, what does "Flatten phantom items BOM structure to create WO?" (Screen 5, Option 15) mean? Options are Y/N.

A - This feature applies to Material and Plus Work Orders. Currently, BOMP WOs only display and allow reporting of top level components. Unfortunately, if you have top level components that are phantom items, you cannot report the actual material usage of the components under the phantom item structure. With this flag set to "Y," when the Work Order is first created the second level components of the first level "Phantom" item are copied to the top level to replace the phantom parents for the work order. This does not alter the original bill of material structure. This way, when you report material consumption, ,you directly report the second level components that were originally under the phantom parents. If you use phantom items, we suggest that you tset this flag to "Y."

Q - In BOMP setup, what does "Enter par item for par comp avail in prod rtg file?" (Screen 5, Option 18) mean? Options are Y/N.

A - In the Product Routing file, the system provides a convenient feature that allows users to drill down to the BOM with the components availability inquiry window. Users may enter other parent items without exiting if the flag is set to "Y."

Q - In BOMP setup, what does "Which Comp qty in WO entry F3 copy frm COP ord# win?" (Screen 5, Option 20) mean? Options are A = Qty Available ; E = Excess Qty ; O = Qty OH

A - When copying orders from COP to WO+, in Work Order Entry, item number field, F3=Copy COP Order. Systems displays the maximum parent items that can be produced based on the availability of components. "QTY-Available" of components is the most reasonable consideration (OH - Alloc, the long-term available qty). But some users may be more aggressive and want to use "Excess Qty" (OH - Alloc + BO, the short-term available qty.) instead of using "QTY On Hand," which is not recommended.

Q - Can operator badges (username + password) barcodes be printed out of Elliot or does that function not exist?

A - Currently Elliott doesn't provide this function. Suggestion: You may designate the operator ID limits to 10 characters, and the password up to 5 , so that the combination (ID + Password) acts as an Item number. Elliott provides an Item file barcode label printing feature.

Q - Is there a way in WO+ (or SFC for that matter) to create one labor grade for outside processing and then have each PO contain info related to value added by the vendor vs. creating a labor grade for each part number that goes through outside processing?

A - WO+ Outside Processing may link with PO# (optional) and the operation transaction can trigger PO Receiving as well.

Q - What other links may exist to previous SFC/ JC tables that would be influencing fields in WO+ (i.e., burden is showing for made items which have not yet had a routing created that mirror the burden based on hours from SFC).

A - At WO+ Cost Master file, none of the sources come from the legacy manufacturing module. Material Cost come from BOM and the Item Master. The Value-Add cost is calculated from the Routing file (BM).

Q - How are dates used in WO+/BOMP (period-driven or date-driven)?

A - We are not sure if we totally understand this question. But anyway, here we go, 1. Manual entry -- Based on "Transaction Date" entered. 2. Scanning (real-time Processing) -- Based on system date as transaction date.

Q - Currently have to reset low level codes as part of the month-end close process. Will we need to continue doing this monthly or do the changes to WO+ eliminate previous issues related to low level codes losing count?

A - We still recommend that you run Reset Low Level Codes periodically. You can automate this process by using deferred processing and setting the reset low level codes as one of the tasks to run periodically. If you have not implemented deferred processing, we highly recommend that you do so.

Q - When working in Work Order Production we have noticed that an operator can not be logged into more than one work order. When logging into a second work order, it suspends the operation from the first. We frequently have operators working on more than one order at a time. We need the clock to run simultaneously, and divide between multiple orders. I'm sure the last time we were out there we were assured this is now possible. Could you explain how?

A - There are two types of labor being tracked in Work Order Plus: direct and shared labor. Direct labor mostly behaves the way you described with one exception -- where you can use a "Batch" operation. In that case, one operator may scan in multiple WOs as a batch processing operation. When the cursor is on "Order No," you may hit F1 (Add Batch) to insert multiple orders with planned QTY. The system will estimate the time you should spend before you click Start. Later, the system will distribute labor and burden costs to each order when the user reports the operation completed. 

On the other hand, you can also use shared labor, which matches more closely to what you want in this case. For shared labor, the operator reports time through the Work Center time clock or the Department time clock function. Any work orders that go through the Work Center and Department will automatically carry the burden of shared labor, which logs in at the applicable Work Center or Department that the operation runs through. Shared labor can be used for low-end assembly line workers. It can be used for high-end operators who operate at a Work Center with multiple CNC machines. In that case, you will set up two operators for the same user. One operator will track cost (shared labor sign-in at the Work Center/Department), and one operator will track current activities (direct labor, zero cost). As the direct labor operator tries to start a new operation, he/she can leave the original operation running so the machine burden and shared labor cost continue to be counted.

Q - When more than one operator is logged into one work order operation, the system does not appear to capture the time for both operators when posting. For example, say two assemblers are working on the same unit. The Work Center is tracking the time of both, but the work order only posts the time of whichever operator completes a quantity. Units are a quantity of one, so both operators can contribute, but only one can process a quantity. How do we capture the labor and burden for the second operator?

A - When multiple operators are working on one (or multiple) work order(s), just one operator should be considered as primary and associated with start/complete tasks -- that operator should login from "Work Order Production." Other operators should scan in to "Work Center" (login from Work Center Time Clock), which is the operation working place instead of Work Order itself. Primary operators will count as "Direct Labor" and other operators will count as "Share Labor," including in production costs. See the previous explanation of shared labor.

Q - When trying to copy an order from COP into a Work Order, we get a message stating that feature items must be copied into SFC. I can't find a flag anywhere to change this. Maybe it has something to do with some of the above questions? Can you advise?

A - You should temporarily turn off the SFC module in the company file for testing purposes. The current logic dictates producing of a feature item will either be in SFC or Work Order, but not both. If SFC is on, then it must go through SFC. If you should have a transition period where you will use both Work Order Plus and SFC, and you will be producing feature/option items through Work Order Plus during this transition period, then we need to make a small modification to allow for copying Sales Order (feature item) to WO even if SFC is still in use.

EMK