The Edit->Materials windows lists in table format all master materials known to the system. The standard search functionality provides the flexibility to search and filter in many different ways.
Each row in the table represents a material and each column a property of the material. Note that only the most commonly used material columns will initially be visible, more advanced materials columns can be added as needed by right clicking in any of the column headers and select the Field chooser option. In the field chooser navigate to the “Material” node in the left side tree, and select between any of the fields listed.
Double click on a cell in the table in order to change the value.
| Click on… | If you want to… |
|---|---|
| Create | Create a new material. Enter Material number, Material name and select the unit type. The material is inserted into the table. |
| Delete | Delete a material. Select the material in the table and press the delete button. |
| Edit Transaction | Create, edit or delete material transactions. A transaction can be a counting, a shipment or a purchase. Please refer to Transactions later in this chapter. |
| Delete transactions | Cleanup transactions. When this option is clicked a new window opens up with options to delete all transactions or transactions older than a specified date. Use this functions to cleanup old and unused transactions. |
The following explains some commonly used materials columns
| Field | Explanation |
|---|---|
| No. | The material number. Is used to uniquely identify the material. |
| Name | The material name is the textual but typically still short explanation of the material. |
| Description | Additional description of the material. |
| Unit type | The unit of measure type for the material. E.g. Amount, Cubic, Area etc. Example: If “Length” is selected as unit type, then ROB-EX shows the units of measure associated to this type in the “Standard unit” field. Please refer to “Std. unit” below. |
| Std. unit | Standard unit is the unit of measure that is used for this material where nothing else is specified. Amount: pieces Cubic: liter, m³, etc. Area: dm², m², km², etc. Weight: g, kg, tons, etc. Length: mm, cm, dm, m, km., etc. Both metric and imperial units are supported. |
| Alternate unit type Alternate std. unit Conversion factor |
Sometimes it is desired to plan a product in two different units. As an example from the chemical processing industry products are typically traded in kg, but during some stages of the production is it desirable to plan in liters in order to carry out correct tank planning (i.e. tank capacity limitations are specified in liters). To support this specify “kg” as the “Std. unit” and select Cubic as the “Alternate unit type”. Select “liter” as the “Alternate std. unit” and e.g. 0.8 as the conversion factor. This means that to convert 1 kg into 1 amount of the “Alternate unit of measure” (i.e. liter) the system should multiply with 0.8. The alternate unit can be used on material graphs (having right click options to show e.g. inventory in the alternate unit of measure) and by macros like SplitOperationsByStorageSpace, which is capable of splitting operations based on available tank storage space. Note: all these three columns are typically not visible by default |
| Custom units of measurement | From version 7.0 you can implement custom units of measurement via the API. This allows you to add e.g. a “boxes6” unit of measure, so if user enters “100 boxes6”, the value will be converted to 600 automatically. See included scrip located in data\scripts\bom\CustomUnitOfMeasure\CustomUnits.groovy. Open the script in an editor and see guide at the top of the script. |
| Material type | If the material is of type: Resource/tool, Raw material, Semi finished product or Finished product. The purpose of this field is for general information and filtering. |
| Procurement type | Specifies if the material is purchased externally or if it is produced in-house. For now this is strictly for informational purpose. |
| Int (Internal production) | Shows if the material is produced for internal use. When creating a new production order materials with this option set can be selected in the drop down box in the “Create new order” window for the “Product” field. |
| Settings | Double click on the three dots in the settings field in the list in order to setup some additional default properties for the material.
|
| Color | The color of the material is shown in the material graph. |
| Use BOM line status | Use BOM line status on inventory calculation. If a BOM line has status Unconfirmed a possibly subsequent counting will be adjusted by the BOM quantity. If no state is set on the BOM line it is considered Unconfirmed. This will solve the case where a BOM consumption/production in ROB-EX is not yet registered/back-flushed in the ERP system and thus the ERP system will export a wrong counting value. I.e. ERP is not up-to-date on the actual order/operation status compared to ROB-EX. By default this must be enabled per material but in GanttSetup.properties it can be enabled for all materials by this setting: bom.line.confirmation.active=on The BOM line status will by default be set to Confirmed when the order is completed. This can be disabled or changed to happen as part of the Operation completed event. See below GanttSetup options: bom.line.confirmation.action=status-rulePossible values: None or status-rule. Default = status-rule.If set to status-rule the state on BOM lines will be set to Confirmed when order/operation state is set to complete bom.line.confirmation.status.rule=on-order-completionPossible values: on-order-completion or on-operation-completion. Default = on-order-completion |
| Use in pegging | If this parameter is not enabled, then the material is ignored as a possible pegging source. I.e. enable this setting for intermediate materials (sub-assemblies) you would like the pegging macro to discover. |
| Use in planning | If this parameter is not enabled, then the material is ignored when using BOM inventory as a constraint during scheduling |
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