Resources Centre
Resource Record Card
Your resources are your materials stock, assemblies, subassemblies and manufacturing process (Labour) items.
Much of the information on the Resource Record Card is generated by Merlin. Virtually all of the information you need to provide is on the Levels Tab (above) and the Buying Tab (below), and even so, much of what you see (such as the Stock Balance figures) is system generated. The record illustrated (above and below) is in
Edit Mode, and the fields in white are those where you provide the data. It also has the NOTES EXIST! flag showing, to indicated that there are comments entered on the Notes Tab.Clicking the Print Button will generate a Stock Movement Summary (month by month) for the item currently on-screen, with options to View or Print the report.
Most of the required input for each new item is obvious, such as Part No., Description, etc., but the following are of note:-
You should create Resource Records Cards for each of your physical materials, and also for non-physical cost carrying items that will appear on your BoMs. The prime example of this would be manual labour. In order that Merlin knows that is it dealing with a non-physical item, there is a rule about the Part No. in these cases, which must begin with the word LABOUR, followed by anything else you like. The format for this would be LABOURxxxxxxxxx
Auto Issue Item is checked for materials that you wish Merlin to issue to any production job, where the item in question appears on the BoM. This is checked by default, and should be unchecked when required.
Examples of where this might be desirable are with items such as glue, or solder, which cannot be accurately quantified.
Unit of Measure in Use, and Unit of Measure to Buy are fairly clear, and are used in conjunction with USE Units in ONE BUY UNIT.
Where a material is purchased in one unit of measure (say litres) but stocked in a smaller unit (say ml.) you can enter the values here and set the Use Units in One Buy Unit to 1000. This enables Merlin to give you the option of using either value in many reports. The native stock unit will always be the smaller of the two. These field defaults to ITEM and 1 when no unit of measure applies.
Shopping List links with Buying Office, and will be covered in that section.
Above is the Buying Tab, where you will need to enter some information for each new record You must provide at least one Supplier Code for each record card, which you can key-in if you know them, select from the drop-down combo. Select your supplier by scrolling and clicking!
You also need to provide the Suppliers Part No. and the Pack Cost for the item. In Merlin, the "pack" is the individual item, or a pack containing a multiple quantity, as defined by your supplier's Part No. (See more information below.)
To the right you will notice some fields for Break 1 & Pack Cost, and Break 2 & Pack Cost.
These are no doubt self-evident, but to be clear, if the item shown goes down in price if, say, 5,000 were bought at once, and again if 10,000 were purchased, then Break 1 would be 5000 and Break 1 Pack Cost £nnn.nnnn and Break 2 would be 10000 and Break 2 Pack Cost £nnn.nnnn.
Merlin will then calculate they purchase price according to the quantity being bought.
You can enter up to three suppliers per item, and select your Default Supplier by typing a number from 1 to 3 in the spinner to select from the list of suppliers created above, or instead you can click on the spinner arrows.You can enter a figure for lead days for each of the three suppliers.
A Next Order From supplier can be selected in the same way as the Default Supplier was selected. Entering 0 here will set this to the Default Supplier.The Days to Next Delivery field will show the figure for the Default Supplier, or the Next Order From supplier, if one is selected. But you can enter a different number here if the default does not apply to the next purchase for any reason.
After Merlin has produced its next Purchase Order for this item, the Next Order From field will be set to the Default Supplier, and the
Days to Next Delivery field will be reset to the figure for the Default Supplier.
Clicking on the Stop? check box checks this item and flags it to Stop Purchases. (Merlin will not purchase items which are Stopped.)
Clicking again un-checks it. Check the Schedule? check box if this item can be scheduled. Schedule? and its check box are visible only if the Supplier selected supports scheduled deliveries, and this is indicated (on the Supplier Record Card).(Merlin will generate schedules for items only if Schedule? is checked.)
The Min Purchase field sets the minimum quantity of this item that Merlin will purchase, but allows any quantity above this figure. If set to 1000 and a purchase requirement is for, say, 750,
Merlin will buy 1,000, but if the requirement is for 1,001 Merlin will buy 1,001.Quantity in One Pack is clear enough, but has a vital role to play in conjunction with Pack Description. and the following should be studied carefully. Also, please note that for HOUSE items (assemblies/subassemblies) this field changes to
Production Run Qty. Further information about this appears further down the page.If we use floppy discs as an example or a "material" you might purchase, and assume that you can buy these loose in any quantity you like (in other words, your supplier's part number is for a single disc), then the Quantity in One Pack is 1, and Pack Description must be left empty. In this case, Merlin will always purchase the exact quantity of discs required.
Let us now suppose that all of the above is correct except that you must buy a minimum of 10 discs in any one purchase, but any number you like above that quantity. In this case, set the above items in exactly the same way, but enter 10 in the MIN Purchase field. Now Merlin will purchase a minimum of ten when a requirement for less than ten exists, or the exact number if the requirement is greater than ten.
Now we'll change the scenario a bit. We'll say you can buy any number you like, but in multiples (bags) of ten. If your supplier's part number is still for the single floppy disc, Quantity in One Pack must be set to 10, Pack Description must be left empty and MIN Purchase set to 0. Now Merlin will always purchase the nearest multiple above the current requirement, so if 9 are needed, Merlin will buy 10x Floppy Disc. If 11 are needed, Merlin will buy 20x Floppy Disc and so on.
Finally, we'll say that (as is more likely in this example) your supplier provides floppy discs in boxes of 10, and his part number is for the pack. Everything is done precisely as in the preceding example except that Pack Description must contain a some descriptive text, which would typically be something like Box of 10 Floppy Discs. Using the figures above, Merlin will now buy 1x Box of 10 Floppy Discs, 2x Box of 10 Floppy Discs and so on. It is the presence of the Pack Description that triggers this behaviour. The content of the text is immaterial to the process, except that it is used to describe the pack.
We'll look at another example using the same principles. Let us say you buy cable by the metre, use it in fractions of a metre, and there are 50 metres on the roll. Quantity in One Pack is 50, and Pack Description will be something like 50 metre Spool XYZ Cable.
And to conclude, you supplier might specify that you must buy the spools of cable, or the boxes of floppy discs in multiples of 5 spools or ten boxes. In these cases Pack Purchase Multiple must be set to 5 or 10 as appropriate. Merlin will now adjust the purchase quantities as appropriate.
Production Batch Quantity.
If the Resource Record Card you are currently viewing is for a HOUSE item, which is to say an assembly or subassembly made in-house, the Quantity in One Pack field becomes the Production Batch Qty. field. The purpose of this is to tell the MRP engine (Merlin QuarterMaster - ShopFloor/Commander/Run MRP and Buying Office/Run MRP) that this item can be built only in multiples of the batch. This can be used if, say, a material component can be purchased only in batch quantities and you wish to work to those batches, or it is more economical to work with certain batch sizes, or you wish to create surplus stock holdings of the assembly, or whatever other reason you may have.
The MRP process will then generate all Works Orders for this item in multiples of the batch. If shortages are being fixed for an item with a batch quantity, and only 1 of those items is required, the Works Order and AutoGenerated job will still be for the batch quantity.
...and the Rest of the Tabs?
The History Tab gives you the buying and last use data for this item. Notes is where you can freely enter as much text as you like about this item. Movements shows every stock movement for this item since the file was last resetStock List shows a scrolling list of your entire Resource file, and Shop List shows everything currently on your Shopping List (Ad Hoc Purchases - see Buying Office).
BoMs gives a list of all the assemblies in which this item is used, and the quantity per assembly. Stop gives a listing of all items where Stop Purchase has been checked.
Set Filter
This is a powerful feature that lets you view just the stock items you want. When you click the SET FILTER button, a dialog appears in which you type a key word or phrase that you are looking for in the materials description field. This may be something like "capacitor", or "cable", or "bottle" - anything that will narrow down the selection to the item(s) you are looking for. (Perhaps you are trying to locate a part who's number you do not know.)All items that contain the word or phrase somewhere within the description field will be selected. If you click the STOCK LIST tab before you begin, you will see the list change to show only items that meet the criteria. When you see a record you want, click on it and it will be selected. You can then use the other tabs to edit this record, if you wish.
You can set a new filter without first clearing the current one, and you can clear the filter by clicking the CLEAR FILTER button, which will make the entire Resource file visible again.
Do not use plurals unless necessary. Entering WASHER will find all items containing the words "washer" and "washers". Entering WASHERS will not find "washer".
Please Note: Depending upon the speed of your PC and the size of your Resource file, screen updates when stepping between records or tabs whilst a filter is set may be perceptibly slower than normal.
Used In Jobs
Click this button to see a list of all running jobs (if any) which use this stock item.
WiP
This button will be visible only if the item currently displayed on the screen is a subassembly. Clicking the button will present you with a list of all Work in Progress (if any) to build this item.
