Sometimes businesses need to source substitute parts from alternative suppliers or else swap one inventory item for another when there’s a shortage. Here are some of the ways Abel helps with those processes.
Substitute parts from Alternative Suppliers
Use Abel’s Parts Catalog to record multiple Supplier’s parts against inventory items that you buy to consume or buy to sell. That way, you’ve got alternative parts already identified and can source them quickly when needed.
This example shows the Parts Catalog viewed for a particular Inventory Item. This is the view you’d use for identifying substitute parts. Recording the Cost Price in the parts catalog is optional but helpful if you are making substitution decisions based on price.
Search for an Inventory Item by Part Details
The Parts catalog has other uses as well. This is one example:
Abel’s inventory search enables you to search by Parts Catalog (Supplier, Part Code or Description). This example shows a search on Part Description:
Inventory Substitution
You can also swap one inventory item for another. The “where used” functions in Abel help you to find where an inventory item is used, either in a bill of materials or an open manufacturing job, and you can then substitute another inventory item.
This example shows the “where used in manufacturing” function with an inventory substitution workflow. In this example, we’re running low on gold jar lids so we want to substitute silver jar lids for some of our manufactures to work around the shortfall:
- Select the inventory item e.g. gold jar lids
- The “Manf Used” function finds current manufactures that use the item
- Select the substitute inventory item e.g. silver jar lids
- Select manufactures that will use the substitute item instead
- Click Save
- Abel substitutes the inventory item in the selected manufactures
There’s an equivalent screen for “where used in bills of materials” that enables you to substitute inventory items that are in your Bills of Materials.