Part look-up / validation

[Gary M.]

I am trying to create an app that will allow us to capture raw material info (vendor, part#, lot #, etc.) for materials brought to our manufacturing line. In addition to just recording the info, I'd also like to do a validation on the part # against a bill of materials to verify that the material brought to the line is actually for the current SKU. If the part # is valid, the record gets submitted to the db. If not, an error message is presented.

How would this issue best be approached?

 

[Dan Peluso]

Hi,
This should be very possible in TracerPlus using our lookup feature. You would need to load the BOM info to TracerPlus via TracerPlus Connect syncing software or via text file import but once you do that, the lookup approach is a pretty straight forward way to pull this off. We have a good amount of sample videos highlighting different TracerPlus features but here is one that is specific to the Lookups option.

http://www.tracerplus.com/webinars/lookups-tracerplus-8.php

Let me know if that helps or if you have any additional questions.

Thanks.

 

[Gary M.]

Thanks for the info. I had already watched the video and I think I understand the lookup function. I believe, however, that I am trying to do something more than a simple look up. I guess it would be more of a two-way comparison. I am looking to verify a part against a bill of materials to check if it is a valid part.
Basically, I can sync the SKU/BOM master list into the device. The data in the grid then shows all the SKUs and the parts that go into that SKU.

SKU1 Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 ... Part25
SKU2 Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 ... Part25
SKU3 Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 ... Part25
SKU4 Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 ... Part25
SKU5 Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 ... Part25

I then have a collection form that the operator would scan data into. At some point, after the SKU and part number have been scanned in by the operator, I was trying to find a way to compare that against the SKU/BOM grid. First find the record for the current SKU and then make sure the part number scanned is one of the 25 parts used for that SKU.
Hopefully this makes more sense.

 

[Dan Peluso]

Hi,

This still seems like a straight lookup to me; though I might structure the data in the lookup table a little bit differently. I also may be mis-understanding so feel free to correct me where I am wrong.

If you stored data in your lookup table as one row for each unique item in your SKU, you could scan the SKU, then scan the following Parts. On each scan of the Part, you could do a lookup based on SKU + Part. If that lookup is successful, you can know that if you just used the "Return Static Value" option in the Lookups. If it fails, you would use the Not Found value to return something that could be validated against.

So the data in the lookup table might look more like this.
SKU1, Part1
SKU1, Part2
SKU1, Part3
.....
.....
SKU1, Part25
SKU2, Part1, <---Note the new SKU number here
SKU2, Part2
etc,etc

Does that make sense or did I misinterpret what you need?

 

[Gary M.]

I thought about that but I am currently using the trial version to create a demo app to present to our Quality department for testing. The 5 record limit sort of forced my hand into the layout that I used so that I could fully test/compare against every part associated with the SKU. I guess I could target just a set number of parts on a single SKU to see if the validation works. I will give it try using the layout you suggested. Thanks for your response.