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Epiglossary

Add a new site

Kinetic + Classic

A site (called a plant in older releases and in table names such as PartPlant) is a physical location inside a company, with its own warehouses, resources, planning parameters and often its own costs. Adding one touches far more than Site Maintenance, so work through the whole checklist below before anyone transacts in it. You need the Multi-Site module licensed to have more than one site in a company.

New site or new company?

Section titled “New site or new company?”

Decide this first, because it’s very hard to undo.

One company, several sites Separate companies
Sites share parts, customers and suppliers Locations share little master data
Same legal entity and tax ID Different legal entities or tax IDs
Finance is run centrally (one AP, one AR, one set of books) Each location runs its own AP, AR and books
Frequent transfers between locations Occasional inter-company trade

If the locations share most of their data and one set of books, use sites. If they run as independent businesses that happen to share an owner, separate companies keep the data and finance cleaner, at the cost of multi-company setup for anything they share.

Checklist for a new site

Section titled “Checklist for a new site”
  1. Create the site in Site Maintenance, with its production calendar and planning parameters, then set it up in Site Configuration Control. Define site-to-site transfer rules if goods will move between sites.
  2. Create warehouses and bins for the site. Then update the site’s defaults for receiving, RMA, inspection and similar locations to point at them.
  3. Define a cost ID if the site should be costed separately, and assign it.
  4. Give users access to the new site in User Account Security Maintenance.
  5. Review part class and product group settings that have site-specific values.
  6. Create part-site (PartPlant) records for every part the new site will stock, make or buy.
  7. Share methods if needed. If a manufactured part’s revision will be used in more than one site, create an alternate method for the new site for each manufactured part and its manufactured components, and mark it as the primary alternate method on the part’s site planning settings.
  8. Split the GL by site if needed. To post the site’s activity to its own GL division, use the GL controls on Site Maintenance (not the ones in Site Configuration), and on Warehouse Maintenance where relevant.
  9. Point demand at the site. If orders for certain products should be made or shipped from the new site, set it as the sales site on those product groups, so users don’t have to change the site on every release.
  10. Resource groups: create or move resource groups for the new site.
  11. Manifest / quick ship: set up a manifest warehouse for the site if you use those features.
  12. Configurators: configurators are tied to revisions, and revisions to sites. Check that configured parts work in the new site.
  13. Custom logic: search BPMs, functions, BAQs and reports for hard-coded site IDs and update them.

Replace MfgSys in a new company

Section titled “Replace MfgSys in a new company”

Every new company is created with a default site called MfgSys. Nothing requires you to keep it. Once you have more than one site, a site ID that doesn’t match a place is confusing on every transaction, report and transfer (“transferred from LAX to MFGSYS”), and report writers end up adding calculated fields just to show a sensible name.

Replace it before anything else is entered in the company. As soon as a part, warehouse or transaction uses MfgSys, it can’t be deleted.

  1. Log in to the new company.
  2. In Production Calendar Maintenance, create the calendar the new site will use.
  3. In Site Maintenance, create the properly named site and assign the calendar.
  4. Switch your session to the new site, so you are no longer logged in to MfgSys.
  5. In Company Configuration, change the default site to the new site. A site can’t be deleted while it is the company’s default.
  6. In Site Maintenance, delete MfgSys.

Shortcuts such as removing everyone’s access to MfgSys and then deleting it don’t reliably work: the site can reappear after the next login. Follow the steps above in order, with the new site as both your current site and the company default before you delete.