Minotaur Software Ltd., Brampton, Ontario: Fully integrated, configurable ERP software for manufacturer's, distributor's and wholesalers.

A Publication of Minotaur Software Ltd.

Manual Lot Allocation by Victor Boersma

For those customers that assign lots to sales orders, Minotaur has recently added a mechanism to allow you more control over the lots to be assigned to particular sales orders.

Traditionally, Minotaur has always offered a mechanism to assign lots to sales orders on a first in, first out basis. This FIFO lot assignment is done when printing picking slips for an order. At the time the assignment is made, the system reviews all the lots currently in the system that have not been assigned to other orders, and assigns the oldest of those available lots to the order for which a picking slip is being printed.

This mechanism works well to minimize stock spoilage by assigning your oldest stock to orders as they are picked.

However, some of our customers have identified that this mechanism is not sufficiently sophisticated to address their needs. In many instances their customers have indicated a preference for certain lots. Using the standard Minotaur FIFO system ignores those customer preferences and manual systems have to be enacted to address this shortcoming.

For customers who require this greater level of control, Minotaur now has a manual lot assignment option. If this option is enacted, the standard Minotaur FIFO system is disabled to be replaced by the more sophisticated system which is implemented at order entry/edit time.

There is a new Allocate (Allo) column on the order detail screen. If the user positions the cursor on the Allocate column, they can perform lot allocations for the part identified on the row they are positioned on by clicking on the Calculate button or by pressing the F9 key.

The type of lot allocation that will occur will depend on the entry the user has made in the Allocate field. If the user enters an A to the Allocate field before selecting to calculate, the system will simply do a FIFO allocation for the part on the current line. If the user enters a B to the Allocate field before selecting to calculate, the system will tentatively do a FIFO allocation and then display a new manual lot allocation screen as shown below.

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