Resources, resource groups and capabilities
Every operation has to be scheduled against something with capacity. Epicor gives you three ways to say what that is, and choosing the right one decides how flexible the schedule can be.
The three levels
Section titled “The three levels”| Level | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Resource | One machine, station, tool or person that can be scheduled on its own | Mill 3 |
| Resource group | A set of related resources, usually a work centre. Every resource belongs to exactly one group | Vertical mills (Mill 1 to Mill 5) |
| Capability | A skill shared by resources that can sit in different groups | Drill: two drill presses, a mill and a lathe with live tooling |
Each operation’s Scheduling Resources card says what it needs.
How the engine chooses
Section titled “How the engine chooses”| The operation names | The engine does this |
|---|---|
| A resource group | Looks at every resource in the group and takes the first one that can do the work at the time needed. Ties go to the order resources are listed in the group |
| A resource | Uses that resource and nothing else, even if another in the group is idle |
| A capability | Searches all resources linked to the capability, in any group, and takes the one that can start earliest. Ties are broken by Resource Priority (higher number wins) |
A resource with a Resource Priority of 99999999 on a capability is never picked by the engine but
stays available for employees to clock onto, which is handy for an overflow machine.
Name only one of them
Section titled “Name only one of them”Epicor lets you fill in a resource group and a resource on the same operation. Don’t. The engine checks available time across the group and on the individual resource, and when the two disagree it can fail to place the operation. Epicor’s own troubleshooting guidance lists an operation with both a resource group and a resource as a cause of global scheduling runs that loop on the same job, and treats having more than one of capability, resource group and resource as an error to fix.
To find and fix them:
- Look in the scheduling log for a job number that repeats.
- In Job Entry, open that operation’s Scheduling Resources and remove either the group or the resource. Reschedule the job.
- Check the part’s method in Engineering Workbench and fix it there too, or the next job will copy the problem.
A BAQ on JobOpDtl where both ResourceGrpID and ResourceID are filled (and the same on PartOpDtl)
finds every affected operation at once.
Setup and production on different calendars
Section titled “Setup and production on different calendars”Setup is often done by a small team of setters working a normal week, while machines run production around the clock. To schedule that:
- In the resource group, create two resources: a setup resource on a setup calendar (for example 40 hours a week) and a production resource on the machine’s calendar.
- On the operation, add two operation details (scheduling resource lines): one with only setup hours, pointing at the setup resource, and one with only a production standard, pointing at the production resource.
- The engine schedules each detail only for the time it carries, so setup load falls on the setters’ calendar and production load on the machine’s.
Don’t tick Setup Complete on these operations when setup is done. That clears setup time for all scheduling blocks on the operation detail, which removes the setup load you’re trying to model.