General Consultant Discussion

Big announcement from Scanco at our user conference today. It is now public knowledge that Scanco is rolling out Work Order 2.0 as JobOps light. They are adding features to make JobOps work more like work order. It will essentially be a partially locked down version of Jobops. Appears ETA will be spring 2019.

So WO as we know it will no longer be supported? Or will it die a slow agonizing death? Any pricing, upgrade information or has this not been baked in yet?

My understanding was it (wo) was going to be supported still on v2019 but who knows

Well, they have been supporting it for many moons in its present form. Plus, I will wager you have to be on subscription to get 2.0 JO Lite. Should be an interesting journey.

I have some concerns with Job Ops, not the least of which is that despite being the designated Sage 100cloud Manufacturing module the Job Ops system is not being updated past 2018.2 compatibility. Essentially this locks all Job Ops users at PU2. Unless they announced some change to this. I sent Sage an email questioning this -- -<< crickets chirping>>. Does Mike Ritchie still work at Sage? I am not surprised that Linda Cade deleted my email (though I'm sure she'll buddy buddy us all at MOTM only to go into hibernation again in 2019) Does this mean that the Job Ops/WO will or won't work with DSD Multi-Bin? My .02: Meh

I add to those concerns, doing a conversion from WO to a JobOps like module is not easy for the data or the end-users. They are separate products for a reason.

Any mention of MRP? Will it be MD publisher branded as ""Scanco WO Lite"" like ""DSD / ScanForce Multi-Bin Basic"" or Sage branded as ""Work Order"" as in ""Mobility for Bar Code""?

the rumor is that Scanco be renaming ""Component Exception Manager"" (Purchase Agent) to MRP for JobOpS and they will be using a version of it for Work Order 2.0

OMG, so scary!!!

FYI Before Sage selected JobOps to be Sage Manufacturing, Mike Ritchie coined the phrase ""JobOps Light"" in one of my meetings with him in Irvine, so he was thinking that back then. Scanco has the project, but it seems to me that Sage is the one pushing this in that direction.

MRP is part of the project. They are adding functionality to Jobops to make it more ""work order like"". There will also me a data migration utility. This should be a good thing, as WO and MRP have not had much done to them for decades.

Why would we want jobops to be more like work order. Who likes work order?

An example is that WO has Work Centers and Operation codes and JobOps just has activity codes. I believe what Scanco is doing will be to have Work Centers and Activity Codes, so that will be a useful improvement to JobOps. I could have worded my original comment better. The WO stuff is more to make the data to be able to be converted, and not force current WO users to have to re-engineer how a work order is organized. Other than that WO users will see huge benefits with better material planning, better scheduling, BIE dashboards, more flexibility, and on, and on, and on.......

There have always been MD rules where they cannot offer functionality that is the same as standard Sage functionality. Some of the original functions of JobOps, such as only Activity Codes, may be that way because of this policy. It's the reason that using Projected Demands in CEM requires licensing MRP. They could have simply added tables to hold this information directly in JobOps, but it was prohibited, so it added $2k+ to the total licensing for those customers wanting to use that. The question is if standard JobOps aka Sage Manufacturing will be adding Work Centers also. Because these modules are so intertwined, is Sage allowing this?

@MarkChinsky To formally weigh in to answer your question, I dislike Work Order. I've implemented and supported it for over 25 years, and wished the customers would have larger budgets. The reality has been that after adding all the ACSG enhancements or dealing with the shortcomings, those customers may have invested as much for a set of modules that never going to be equal to JobOps.

I also wonder how Bill of Materials will be handled along with routings with WorkOrder 2.0. JobOps and WorkOrder handle BOM's very differently.

The BOM module is staying as is. I am not sure if how BOM interfaces with JO will change. I had a conflict when Joe B demo'd what has been currently developed. (yes--proof that they are deep in to development).

Scary... templates and multiple level BOM are pretty different

The big question is will Master Developers have access to source code with Work Order 2.0.

I was told not for at least 2 years... they are recommending BOI to interface.. but 2 years is a long time.

I don't know why Sage would not take a more conservative path with WO/MRP. Just thinking of all the myriad combination of ways the existing the WO/BM/MRP install base has - including tons of vital extended solutions - into a re-engineered JobOps....makes me more than a little nervous. xkzero did the JC to framework project for Sage, but we didn't have the burden of needing to re-design the business processes or do anything except pretty much a straight data dictionary map. Even so, that project was major beast. But hey - lots of WO consulting opportunities on the horizon, right?

By the way, we chose not to bid on WO, so I'm not throwing water on the project. I'm simply expressing my nervousness based on our experience and what I'm picking up on the grapevine!

I think this approach is more conservative. They are adding some functionality, and locking some current features in a product that already exists in current technology. It also consolidates the product line. Overall, a smaller and less risky project.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. It sounds like WO/MRP is going away and being replaced with WO 2.0 aka JobOps Light. Is that right? If it is, migrating a lot of the install base is going to be thorny.

I have a bad feeling about all of this. Sage is loosing control of products that affect a large segment of customers. At least with xkzero's upgrade of Job Cost to framework we got a like for like. Now, it seems we may be getting 'you'll like it or else'.

So, after, what, seven years? of ""Work Order on the Framework is coming next year"", work order is going away and we get a cut-down version of JobOps, with its accompanying baggage like MDs don't get access to source code.

Rock and a hard spot - If the customer has to convert to a brand new manufacturing module, they may as well step back and assess whether they should move to a different ERP package entirely. No one likes change, especially the clients and resellers.

Sage might as well offer a fire sale price of X3 to customers who own WO. I'm not being a product snob, but I've been focused on manufacturing software now for about 10 years with Epicor ERP as my lead project. Sage 100 with or without Jobops is NEVER going to win a net new deal that involves real manufacturing unless the key decision maker came from a company running Sage 100 and just wants to keep his life easy. Sage let that ship sale about 15 to 20 years ago when they had to decide if they were serious about manufacturing or not.

tldr: #xtuple

Sage brass: ""There is no ""cloud"" in manufacturing.

So what do I tell my two customers that are just now going live on work order after having unused licenses for a couple of years? And who are also buying the former ASCD (now SCANCO) WO enhancements? What happened to work order being updated to framework? For make-to-stock, Work order has some benefits over JobOps. Especially the whole set up an internal customer and having to do internal invoices to close out tickets. That isn't an improvement over work order work flow. What happens when they want to do their next upgrade?

One hopes that the JO enhancements are similar and at NO additional charge