In Epicor®, a Method of Manufacturing is a combination of both the routing and the materials used to make something.
For example, say 90% of your parts share a significant portion of their operations and/or materials with other parts. You could create a MOM for each, or even copy one MOM to the other. However, what if you want to modify the routing, materials, or both down the road. Epicor® offers a ‘search and replace’ feature for a specific part, but nothing for a group of parts or any operations or group of operations.
If you built your MOM’s using Phantom Part’s, you only need to change the MOM of the Phantom, and when Epicor® generates the job (via MRP, manual job creation, or quoting) the latest version of the phantom part’s MOM is inserted into the MOM of the job making the administration of MOM’s with common elements MUCH easier and more efficient. Think of a Phantom Part like a “Mail Merge” function in Microsoft Word where your phantom part is like a template that gets merged into the actual job when the job is created.
