Consumption Workbench has recently been extended in functionality to allow users to copy BOM fields to consumption rows by default. With this addition, more users are finding it useful and have requested further additions to its functionality. In order to accommodate some of the requests, the Proplanner Team has incorporated two new filtering options: Multi level BOM and Advanced Filtering.
Multi Level BOM
This feature is as simple as it sounds, users had indicated that the selection of an entire family, model, option or assembly was a tedious exercise… especially for new product introduction or initial data creation. Truthfully, consumption workbench was not really designed for these tasks, it was designed for the more targeted work of running changes. However, with a simple change to allow the user to specify if they are doing single items or multi level BOMs, the usefulness of the tool was extended to these mass edit functions. By simply checking the Multilevel BOM Comparison box and then choosing the number of levels you would like to compare, a user can effectively compare an entire BOM to a selection of processes.
In this example, you only see one assembly in the selection. However, the tool is going to look at that assembly, all of its children… then move to the BOMs of all children… then move to those children… until it hits either the end of the BOM or the level limit selected in the dropdown. This allows a user to check an entire product and be sure that all parts are consumed somewhere in the selection. This did however, create a problem. Not all parts need to be consumed. For example, what do I do with children underneath BUY/Purchased items? Those items are consumed in the supplier processes, not my own. This is the reason Advanced Filtering was added.
Advanced Filtering
Advanced Filtering is a tab that was added to consumption workbench to deal with the extra parts that are not actually consumable in a process routing. It is an unassuming UI when you first click on it, but as veteran Assembly Planner users look at it, it should remind you of the UI of Mass update, Pivot Grid and Advanced search… some of the more powerful tools we have.
The blank screen is waiting for filters to be added. Clicking on the Advanced Filter button at the top allows a user to add filters on consumption or on the BOM as required. In the example below, what I want to compare is the BOM against an assembly line. So I am going to filter out all activities that are Machining (by saying the MachineID must be blank) and Inspection (by saying to ignore it if the description contains “inspection”). In addition I am going to filter our phantom parts (by saying that the child cannot be a Z type) and “alternate” BOM rows (by saying the Bill Type cannot be “A”).
These searches work as an advanced find, when they are built, it limits the Process/BOM Dataset to only entities that match your full set of criteria. This is a powerful tool to allow users to remove the “noise” that always comes with BOM/Process comparison.
Using Multi Level BOM and Advanced Filtering, users should be able to consume large BOMs within consumption workbench without a lot of extra time being spend doing selections in the setup screen, and without wasting time consuming parts that may not even be consumables within the current plant. Streamlining the processes of New Product Introduction and Data Population for new users or areas.
