Currently there's a validity date for BOM components. When Engineering phasing out a component with a replacement, they put a expected phase out date on the the "Valid To" date in the BOM for the old components. However, there's no similar function in place for the part numbers themselves, which means after the "valid to" date, the Engineers need to remember to go to the Item Master to manually set the part number to obsolete. It would be a lot easier for Engineering to manage if they are able to put a "Valide To" in advance for part numbers, and the system would automatically obsolete the parts after the date.
by: Michael T. | over a year ago | Manufacturing
Comments
You can actually do this by using the phantom functionality. By making your replaced product a phantom, and creating a BOM for it that contains the new component, the planning and work order creation process will consider the 'phase out', since a phantom will be added to the work order until it has no stock, to then be replaced by its own 'component'.
Thanks, Jean! That's a great idea to phase out parts! We've been using Phantoms, but I never thought about using it that way. This could really help us on phasing out parts.
However, I still like to see the validity date for the part number though. Once the old parts are used, the engineers would still need to go back and review the "Phantom" part numbers and obsolete them if they are used up.